


The Cage is Filled with Reminders of the Past

by conflicted



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Bullying, Character Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied Relationships, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, Murder, Only read if you are a sad person who enjoys sad things, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Rape/Non-con, Psychological Torture, Sorry Not Sorry, This entire story is dark and sad, Trans Male Character, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-04 07:45:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11550681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conflicted/pseuds/conflicted
Summary: Karasuno Volleyball club has been kidnapped by a group of masked murderers. All they know is that their friends are dead and these are the people that did it. They all have dark secrets in their past they're not ready to expose but when their name gets called, what choice do they have? All they need to do to escape is get through all the names on the list, right? Except life is never that easy, especially not for them.





	1. And They Were Given a Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you looking for soul crushing back stories, murder, mental torture, and more? Well you've come to the right place! Please enjoy! And if you have any ideas for this story while reading please feel free to tell me cause the more terrible things these poor babies have to go through the better? Right. God they deserve better than this. Oh well, enjoy.

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ “Miyagi Prefecture was a buzz the morning of October 16th, 2016. As the residents of the quaint Torono Town sat down to watch the morning news or read their daily papers they were informed of a shocking occurrence that had happened the night before: four dead and twelve missing. _ ” She threw the article down with a laugh that made me flinch, it was much too high pitched and squeaky. Her words echoed over the intercom speaker and into our soon-to-be personal hell,  _ “how does that sound boys? You’re finally famous!”  _ The intercom went dead, cutting off her hearty laughter, leaving us to brew in this new information.

 

I could feel my breathing pick up and my heart rate accelerate the moment my surroundings set in. The room was too dark for any of us to see, the only light the small red dot signalling the intercom was off. The only noise I could hear was a buzzing that I couldn’t tell where it was from and the sound of our labored breathing. The smell of the room was burning at my nostrils and eyeballs —making them watery with tears— a sour, dead kind of scent. Just that was enough to tell me that wherever we were was not going to be a happy place, if the situation (waking up in complete darkness after have being kidnapped by some lady we’d never even seen) wasn’t enough to tell us our lives had gone to shit.

 

“They know we’re gone,” Sugawara Koushi sighed out in relief, “they’ll be looking for us.” He was referring to the article the laughing lady had read to us, and we all found ourselves hoping that he was right.

 

“How are they going to find us, huh? Not even we know where we are,” Nishinoya Yuu balked. He wasn’t the only one, only a day into the experience, who was starting to lose hope. I was even starting to feel myself fall apart and the real nightmare had yet to even start.

 

“Don’t be a pessimist Noya,” Sugawara hissed out.

 

“What about this situation is something to be optimistic about? Takeda is dead. Ukai is dead. Yachi and Kiyoko? Dead. And us, where do we find ourselves this fine evening? Kidnapped. Not to rain on your parade Suga but nothing about this situation is screaming optimism,” Nishinoya loudly sassed back at him, slamming his hand on the ground heavily, making the whole room rattle eerily.

 

“We’re still alive,” Sugawara whispered, “we’re alive and we’re together.”

 

“Suga’s right,” a booming voice of authority and wisdom broke out, “so far there haven’t been any demands and we’re all together. We can protect each other, we’re a team, we have each other’s backs.”

 

“Sure, Captain,” came Nishinoya’s dejected voice from within the darkness.

 

“Thank you Daichi,” said Sugawara.

 

“Now, I’m going to do a quick roll call to make sure everyone’s still here. When I say your name call out your jersey number, got it?” Sawamura Daichi commanded.

 

“Got it,” we all said.

 

“Sugawara Koushi,” his voice boomed and I found it oddly comforting from where I sat huddled against unknown bodies on the floor. To know that Daichi was still trying to keep us all together was something I never thought I’d be so grateful for.

 

“Two,” Sugawara’s voice shook as he spoke. He was trying to be strong, Suga was always trying to be strong for us, but he was just as scared as the rest of us.

 

“Azumane Asahi.”

 

Asahi stuttered for a moment, seeming to have trouble getting his tongue to work, “three,” he finally got out.

 

“Nishinoya Yuu.”

 

When Nishinoya responded he sounded tired in comparison to his earlier vibrato, which was disconcerting to say the least.

 

“Tanaka Ryuunosuke.”

 

“Five,” his voice cracked halfway through and some hushing sounds could be heard nearby. Tanaka, proud and strong, was crying.

 

“Ennoshita Chikara.”

 

“Six,” his voice wavered, sounding wet as if it were stained by his tears.

 

“Kinoshita Hisashi.”

 

“Seven.” I’d never heard him speak before, his voice was soft and gentle, almost silent in the growing sound of the buzz.

 

“Narita Kazuhito.”

 

“Eight”

 

“Kageyama Tobio.”

 

The second Kageyama’s name rang out I sucked in a breath and held it. I felt like I just had to know that he was okay, had to. Because even if being here with me, wherever I was, wasn’t exactly perfect, it was certainly better than me not knowing where he was. “Nine.” His voice was close by, I could hear the way it wavered when he was nervous, the way his vocal cords sounded strained from the stress of it all. While maybe not in every sense of the word, I could hear that he was okay.

 

“Hinata Shoyo.”

 

I let out my breath that I’d forgot that I’d been holding and, still looking into the murky blackness of our cage in the direction Kageyama’s voice had come from, whispered, “ten.”

 

“Tsukishima Kei,” Daichi’s voice wavered, he was worried. Statistically speaking, if you’re in a bad situation, it’s most likely not as bad as you think. Basically, I had this itching suspicion that Daichi was worried that we weren’t all there. Of course, had I known just how bad our situation was going to be I would have been twice as worried as Daichi.

 

“Eleven,” Tsukishima said sounding as bored and put together as usual, which was oddly reassuring. I didn’t know if I could handle Tsukishima being stressed out from this.

 

“Yamaguchi Tadashi?” It was a question, a remaining hope that maybe Suga was right and we really were  _ all _ here.

 

“Twelve,” his voice cracked, he was terrified. “Twelve,” he repeated.

 

A sigh of short-lived relief fell from everyone’s mouths once he had finished. We were all there, we were all okay. Sure, we were scared and worried and didn’t how or why we were wherever it was we were but we were together.

 

The buzzing sound reached a maximum and I could hear shuffling as everyone, me included, rushed to cover their ears. Suddenly, like it had never been there, it halted only to be replaced by a quick clicking sound that signalled the room being filled with an ugly white, fluorescent light. As I was rubbing the dots from my vision a hand landed on my shoulder and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I met the dark blue eyes of my closest friend, Kageyama Tobio. “Are you good?” he asked awkwardly, looking away. I almost laughed at his bashfulness —if I weren’t still freaking out on the inside.

 

“Not yet,” I told him honestly. “You?”

 

“Well, I can honestly say I’ve been better,” he scoffed before settling down on the floor in front of me. I looked around, seeming everyone reuniting with each other now that we could see each other, checking each other for any injuries (and luckily finding none). It turned out we were in what appeared to be a  _ very _ big dog cage (not big enough for it to not feel crowded with twelve fully grown men in it though, but big enough that we weren’t completely crushed together). It was tall enough that we could all stand up comfortably and the sides were bolted to the ground so we had a smooth surface to sit on. The cage was sitting in the center of a windowless, concrete room with only a speaker, two cameras (one over the door and one across from it) and a large fluorescent light directly in the center of the ceiling. It was bleak, and boring. The only thing that made me raise my eyebrow was the big T.V. screens placed in the center of each of the three walls, excluding the one with the door.

 

“Why do you think we’re here? Do you think she’s gonna train us to be a really cool ninja team?” I asked in my usual excited, life-is-good nature, trying to keep things —even remotely— normal for the two of us.

 

“As if,” he scoffed (which was pretty much his only speaking style), “do you see Tsukishima? He would make the worst ninja, he’d make a better tree. Maybe one whose only line is-”

 

“Idiots,” Tsukishima interrupted. Knowing Kageyama, that was probably what he was going to say anyway which (with the dire situation we had found ourselves in currently at the back of my mind) made me laugh. Tsukishima came and sat down to my right and Yamaguchi to my left, making a small first year circle on the floor of our cage.

 

“Nice one Tsukki,” Yamaguchi said half-heartedly, his eyes puffy and bloodshot and his nose all sniffly. Honestly, and I’m being really honest here so please don’t judge me, he looked like I kicked puppy and I just want to hug him.

 

“Shut up Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima hissed half-heartedly.

 

“Sorry Tsukki,” he whimpered out and I saw both of Tsukishima's and Kageyama’s hearts break at the sight —and felt mine do something incredibly similar.

 

“Yamaguchi,” I whispered, sounding as sad as I felt looking at his pathetic face. I pulled him into my arms and he sniffled into my shoulder. “You’d make a good Ninja Yamaguchi, no one would have the heart to hurt you.”

 

“Thank you Hinata,” Yamaguchi tells me with a big smile on his face that, in my opinion, completely lightens the mood.

 

Well, lightened the mood (the light mood was very short lived) because the beeping of the intercom signaling something we didn’t quite understand at the time—and wished we never had to.  _ “Sawamura Daichi,” _ it spoke and then was turned off once again. Daichi rushed to his feet and the rest of us were quick to follow, not a single person spoke as we waited for something to happen. Minutes passed before the single door in the room rattled with the sound of locks upon locks —oh god, even if we were able to get out of this cage we’d never get past that door— before finally creaking open. In walked three of the biggest men I had ever seen, each wearing a stark white mask with two small holes for their eyes. Two held huge guns and moved to stand next to the door  _ (pointing the guns right at us!)  _ while the third walked up to our cage with a pair of handcuffs. I felt my body tense with unease at just the sight of them and a shiver ran down my spine as ugly memories burst to the forefront of my mind.

 

“Sawamura Daichi, please separate yourself from the rest and come with me. If you put a fight we will shoot one of your friends, if one of you tries to run we will shoot both of you,” he said in an emotionless voice that sent shivers down my spine. I inched my way to hide behind Kageyama to watch as Daichi nodded and took a step forward. The masked man unlocked the cage then (oddly)  _ gently  _ handcuffed Daichi’s wrists. He closed and locked the cage once Daichi’s wrists were secure before finally leading him out of the room. The other two filed out after him, locking up the door behind them.

 

We all stood there froze in confusion, the tension only broke when Suga collapsed to his knees, his shoulders shaking in what looked like held back tears.

 

“Suga?” Came the weak yet gentle voice of Azumane Asahi, approaching Suga slowly and kneeling by his side. “Suga, he’ll be okay. He’ll be just fine Suga,” Asahi kept whispering, over and over, as if he were a broken record, to his broken down friend.

 

“We’ll be fine Suga, for all we know they could just be asking him some questions,” Nishinoya tried to comfort but it did little help. Suga just needed to cry to himself, to let it all out.

 

“What do you think they wanted him for?” Yamaguchi whispered to me from his position behind both Tsukishima and Kageyama, who were completely sheltering the two of us.

 

His question, though, was immediately answered by the televisions coming to life.

“Please state your name and age,” the same masked man that had come to take Daichi asked, his voice spilling cleanly through the speaker. All eyes were immediately drawn to the nearest screen to see Daichi, sitting chained to a table like out of a cop show in a room as equally bleak as our own, it even had the same type of screen sitting on the wall. The two armed, masked men from before stood next to the door and the third man sat at the other side of the table from Daichi, looking through a manilla folder.

 

“Where am I? What’s going on?” Daichi asked, thrashing a little in his seat to try to get his hands free. His face was stone cold and stubborn and his eyes were alight with a strange combination of fear and bravery.

 

The masked man just clicked his tongue in response to Daichi’s dramatic questions, though the noise held no true annoyance in comparison to Tsukishima’s signature tsk. “There is no reason to resist. We are going to have a conversation, I am going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer the questions. Then I am going to give you a choice, once you have made your choice you can go back to your friends. Now, please state your name and age,” the masked man repeated, sounding annoyed.

 

Daichi sighed, giving in. “My name is Sawamura Daichi and I am eighteen years old.” He still sounded skeptical, though, and sat rigid straight and tense in the metal chair staring across the table at the man in apprehension.

 

“He’s okay,” I could hear Suga whisper to himself. Suga’s feeling of relief was short lived once the man started talking again, and okay was certainly a loss term when look at the situation as a whole.

 

“Let’s start out simple,” the masked man said emotionlessly, though from the corner of the mask we could see his mouth quirk up in a nasty smirk, “you grew up in poverty. You were raised by your mother because your father was very busy with work trying to support you all, sometimes working up to three jobs to support you all. I could hardly call what your mother did as parenting though, as you had to take care of her more than she took care of you. Your mother suffers from extreme depression and social anxiety and was unable to function in society because of it, forcing your father to pick up all of the slack. You were forced to stay home and take care of your mother who was unable to take care of herself. Which explains your caring attitude and your clear-headedness, in my opinion. You would work nights to help support your family, which left little room for any interests of your open. When you started junior high your mother gave birth to your younger brother and with your help was able to work up the courage to get a part-time job allowing you to find your passion in volleyball. Is this all true?”

 

“Yes, it is but I don’t-”

 

“Is it true that your mother’s name is Sawamura Miho?” He said easily cutting off Daichi’s confused ramblings.

 

“Yes. But,” said Daichi through a tense jaw only to be interrupted again.

 

“Is it true your father’s name is Sawamura Hiroshi?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is it true that your younger brother’s name is Sawamura Mori?”

 

“Yes.” It was obvious Daichi’s confusion was growing alongside our own.

 

“We are going to sever the spinal cords of one of these three people paralyzing them from the waist down, you may now make your choice, who gets paralyzed?”

 

Silence fell through the speaker sitting heavy on the room. A couple people could be heard squeaking out  _ what _ and  _ why _ but otherwise we remained completely shell-shocked. Daichi sat in a state of shock and his face, unchanging, seemed to be stuck in and expression of surprise to the point where I had honestly thought the screen had frozen. The rest of us sat confused and bewildered on the concrete floor of the cage we were all locked in. Which I guess we were only to (apparently) be released from to doom someone else’s life. “What did you just say?” Daichi asked, uncharacteristically speechless.

 

“We are going to paralyze either your mother, your father, or your brother, you may choose who. But please do hurry, I would like to get to the more interesting part sooner rather than later.”

 

“Why?” He sounded so small then. “How do I even know you’re going to do it? How do I know this isn’t a bluff?” He was grasping on straws, leaning towards the masked man with a sense of panic and urgency I’d never seen on anyone’s face before.

 

The masked man simply slid the manilla folder over to him, allowing him to leaf through the pages. His whole body contorted in fear the further in he got, sweat forming on the back of his neck, his hands started to tremble, his jaw tensed, his eyes widened. His entire body was showing his emotions and, as we all leaned closer to the screens from out place behind bars, anticipation was the emotion being plastered out by our body language. “As you can see, we have been monitoring your family and know exactly where each of them are at any given point of time. It is not a question of if we  _ will _ do it but  _ who  _ we will be doing it to. Now, do I need to ask you a third time? Who will we be-”

 

“Okay,” Daichi said suddenly, cutting him off, “I get it. If I answer your question do I get to ask one of my own?”

 

“Sure, ask away. I can not promise a response though.”

 

Daichi nodded, as if this were a fair trade. “This will ruin them,” he hissed out. “It will destroy Mori’s future, it will end my Dad’s job as a construction worker, it would probably throw my mother even worse into her mind’s illnesses. Somehow I feel like you thought this through, knew that this would ruin my family. Trust me when I say this,” his eyes narrowed dangerously and his next words held an unspoken threat right on the tip of his tongue, “we  _ will _ figure out why you’re doing this.”

 

“As fascinating as this all is to listen to, I could care less about why you make your decision or what you think our motives are. But, you should know, you have two minutes to make a choice before I paralyze all three of them.” Daichi’s face contorted in shock and I could feel my own do the same. For me, the decision would be so easy I could have made it without hesitation but Daichi? His family sounded like good, hard working people whose entire lives would be completely destroyed if this were to happen to even one of them. A clock appeared on the screen in the room Daichi was in and I could barely make out the numbers counting down his final minute.

 

“Okay,” Daichi said, looking up at the masked man with a stone-face and despair in his eyes, “I choose-” with the name still echoing around in my head, the screen cut to a surveillance camera for a convenience store. I felt like he was going to learn to regret his decision. In it I could see a women working the counter, a look of shock crawling it’s way onto her features as two men quickly walked up to the counter. She was yanked over the counter and pinned to the floor so the camera could see as the second man plunge a knife into her lower back, severing her spinal cord. Kageyama jumped to cover my eyes at the last second, but he was too late. The damage was done. When he uncovered my eyes the screens were black once again save for the stark white letters reading  _ Sawamura Miho _ . I felt like he was going to learn to regret his decision. The image of her scream was plastered across my mind’s eye and I could feel tears start to slip down my cheeks. Kageyama gently turned us away from the screen, he was clearly trying to be strong for the both of us but even I could tell the toll being taken on him.

 

A couple minutes later Daichi was put back into the cage. He wasn’t even crying, just kind of emotionless, he was still in shock. His wrists were all cut up and bloody from fighting against the cuffs and he was wasn’t even coherent. Once the cage was locked back up Daichi collapsed into the waiting arms of Suga and began crying just as hard as he was. “I’m so sorry Daichi, I’m so sorry,” he whispered over and over again as he clutched Daichi to his chest so tightly it looked like it hurt. I could see as Suga registered what Daichi was saying, his body tensing and his features stricken with shock. “Oh my god.”

 

“What? What did he just say Suga?” Nishinoya asked, placing his hand desperately on his friend’s shoulder, his tone of voice one of true desperation.

 

“Oh god, Noya, you were right,” was all Suga said in response not even raising his head to meet his shorter friends eye.

 

“What did he  _ say _ Suga?” Nishinoya pressed urgently.

 

“They’re doing it for fun,” he choked out angrily and held Daichi closer to quiet his sobs, “they’re going to make us all do it.”

 

We froze at that. Kageyama’s hand, still resting tightly on my shoulder, started to shake. “What do you mean?” I asked, causing everyone’s heads to swivel around to look me from where I was poking out from behind Kageyama’s back. “What do they want from us?”

 

“I’m sorry Hinata, but it doesn’t look like there’s much to be optimistic about anymore.” Just hearing Suga say that, seeing Daichi so weak, feeling Kageyama shaking with fear, it was enough to know that he was completely right. It felt like all of the people who were there to keep us strong had given up. There wasn’t much to be optimistic about at all.

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

We froze. Actually, physically froze. No one dared even take a breath, the familiar sound echoing in the silence. For the Karasuno Volleyball team to be standing so still you’d have thought you were looking at a photograph. But as Kageyama pulled me closer, hid me further behind him and Nishinoya latched onto Asahi protectively, unnerved and scared no matter what name was called next and forced to go through what Daichi just did; I had a sneaking suspicion the worst was yet to come.

  
_ “Azumane Asahi,” _ the voice through the speaker spoke calmly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What terrible, horrible things can I possibly be planning to do to these poor kind souls? All of them. Honestly, this story holds no joy, it is all sad and dark and Suga struggling to be a good mom when all of his children are in pain. So yeah, you sick twisted minds that enjoy this, please continue on cause I should be updating soon!!


	2. And Then None Were Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azumane Asahi has been called to the table, time to learn about his past!

Suga remained curled up on the floor around Daichi who had managed to calm down enough to watch Asahi on the T.V. (though his eyes were still bloodshot and he was still sniffling too hard to talk). He just rested his head in his best friend’s chest and stared at the black screen, waiting to watch as Asahi was put through the same mental torture he had just been through.

 

“Kageyama?” I asked quietly as we waited for the T.V.s to turn on.

 

“Yeah?” He responded. He, along with everyone else, had been much quieter since Daichi had returned.

 

“Are you still okay?” He had yet to remove his hand from my shoulder and was sitting so tensely I would worried he’d get stuck that way.

 

“Why would I still be okay? Dumbass,” he hissed but still refused to look me in the eye. His hand tightened and in response I leaned heavily into his side.

 

“It’s okay Bakageyama, I’m not okay either but at least we’ve got each other,” I smiled up at him (no matter how forced) and he just glared back but at least he looked at me. 

 

“Pay attention, you idiots, it’s on,” Tsukishima whispered to us in his usual tone of voice and it remaining unchanged visibly calmed Yamaguchi —and even a couple others, me included— down.

 

“Please state your name and age,” was immediately heard after that through the speaker. Both Kageyama and I whipped around to face the screen. Naturally, I scooted back under his arm and settled against his side. People always seemed to enjoy when in physical contact with me, they said I was grounding (whatever that means). 

 

The masked man was tapping his fingers on the manilla folder, patiently waiting for Asahi to answer his question. “Azumane Asahi, I’m eighteen years old,” he said quietly. Almost so quiet that we couldn’t make it out.

 

“Please allow me to tell you what I had told your friend. We are going to have a conversation, I am going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer the questions. Then I am going to give you a choice, once you have made your choice you can go back to your friends. Do you understand?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Let us begin. You were born into a, what’s a good way to put this, less than happy family. Your mother was cheating on your father nearly every night, to the point where you don’t even know if your father is your biological father. Your father was a horrible, abusive man. He would drink until he was incoherent and beat your mother right in front of you. Of course, being just a small child you were never able to stand up to him and even to this day you’re afraid to stand up to people. But she wasn’t cheating to escape your father, was she? It was quite the opposite. He was a horrible man who would beat your mother in front of you for cheating, which just further pushed her to cheat to keep his attention  _ off of you _ . She made it as obvious as possible what she was doing so your father’s anger was only pointed at her. You were taken from them when you were ten and put into the foster system where you were adopted by a kind man who you live with to this day. Is this all true?”

 

“Yes,” whispered Asahi. 

 

It hadn’t occurred to me that so many of us had such dark pasts, and maybe this realization was the point behind this whole thing. “No, that doesn’t make any sense,” I whispered to myself. Kageyama gave me a weird look but I just shook it off, choosing to tuck myself even deeper into his side and wait for Asahi to get back.

 

“Good. Then is it true that your mother’s name is Kazuki Mira?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is it true your adopted father’s name is Azumane Yoshi?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is it true that the agent who took you away from your original home was named Nishinoya Kenji?” Murmurs filled the room at that but were quickly silenced with Asahi’s response of agreement. “Then please pick one of them to be arrested for the crime of killing your father.” I paused, hardly noticing that I definitely wasn’t the only one who hadn’t seen that comment coming. In a way, we had all expected him to have to make the same choice as Daichi, but his was different. The woman who protected him, the man who saved him, or the man that gave him a home, and Asahi must choose which one to send to  _ jail _ . Once they got out, if they could survive within, their lives would be ruined.

 

“I…” he was speechless, his entire face contorting in confusion.

 

“We know you know who did it, actually we know you witnessed them doing it. You have five minutes.”

 

Daichi was forced to make innocents suffer, but Asahi was forced to make someone who  _ helped  _ him suffer. He was forced to repay their kindness with a life sentence. These people had planned out the purest form of psychological torture a person could endure.

 

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” he kept repeating frantically. 

 

“Don’t lie to us, Azumane, we know more than even you do.” The man smiled, his mask tilting slightly at the movement. “And you were there to witness it.” It sounded like the masked man was mocking him.

 

“Please stop, they don’t deserve this!” He was hyperventilating by now and then let out a whisper so quiet it couldn’t be picked up by the speaker. The masked man nodded and the screen flipped over to a house, a police car pulled up in front of it, it’s lights on. The driver got out and knocked on the front door. It opened to reveal a kind, tired looking man who talked with the policeman for a while before collapsing against his door frame in tears. He gave the policeman a quaint nod before following him to the car. The screen went black, the bright white letters of  _ Azumane Yoshi _ joining Daichi’s mother’s name.

 

“It’s going to be different every time,” Yamaguchi whispered, “they’re going to change it to be the hardest decision we individually could make.” More tears slipped from his eyes, not as if he were sobbing or even crying but just scared.  _ Tears for fear, _ I joked to myself sarcastically.

 

“You’ll be safe, Tadashi, I promised to keep you safe,” Tsukishima whispered to him. It was something only Yamaguchi was meant to hear but it was comforting to me either way.

 

“Thank you Tsukki.”

 

“Who do you think will be next?” I heard Narita ask Ennoshita. We all turned to face them and waited for his response.

 

“There isn’t much of a pattern yet so I couldn’t be sure, but I’d say probably Sugawara, since it’s been the third years so far,” Ennoshita responded looking sadly out across his team. Daichi tightened his hold on Suga as they scooted back from the door to let Asahi back in. He slowly slid down the side of the cage next to the door and pulled his knees up to his chest to bury his face in them.

 

“Asahi, Daichi, come on,” Nishinoya whispered as gently as he could, “let’s move you two away from the door, okay?” Daichi and Suga nodded (Asahi remaining unresponsive) and Suga gently led Daichi towards the back of the cage, Nishinoya taking Asahi’s hand and leading him away too.

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

We held our breaths, anxious and worried about whose name they were going to say. “We will be giving you some food and water, you will not be getting any more until the next person returns, enjoy,” the same peppy female voice —who had been doing all the announcements— said before turning off the intercom. The door was unlocked and in came two carts, one filled with food and the other filled with water followed by three armed gunmen and the masked man.

 

“Please line up at the door for a water bottle and a meal,” one of the masked men said monotonically. We slowly nodded and stood, forming a line. One by one they handed water bottles and a small tray of food through the appropriate opening in the bars to each of us and we slowly filed back to our claimed sitting spaces. “The next person will go when that time,” he gestures to one of the screens as it shifted from the names to a bunch of numbers, “reaches zero.”

 

“That says twenty four hours, do you expect us to just wait in here for a whole day?” Tanaka shouted, rushing up to grasp at the bars of the door, “what about going to the bathroom? Huh? What about bathing? Are we seriously supposed to survive a whole day on this little food!”

 

“You will get to go to the bathroom one by one after your next meal,” and with that he left the room, the carts following behind and then finally the armed gunmen.

 

“After only a couple times I wouldn’t have expected myself to not even notice the guys with guns,” Tsukishima scoffed while he handed his bread roll to Yamaguchi.

 

“You two are the cutest friends!” I gushed rather loudly, trying to not think too hard on his comment. It felt a little too true and was proof of how comfortable we were getting in this cage. Even in this short amount of time. A couple other people looked over at the two of them, Yamaguchi blushing wildly and Tsukishima clicking his tongue, and exclaimed their agreement. “Have you ever considered dating?” Silence fell once again and I immediately slapped my hand over my mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

 

“We’re locked in a cage together for who knows how long, with dark threats to our daily lives looming over our heads. I don’t think any of us are in any place for prejudice, don’t you think?” Suga said with his usual warm smile. “Let’s just talk freely, they clearly already know everything about us.”

 

“It’ll be a nice bonding experience,” Daichi said, finally having composed himself. “If there’s anything we need right now it’s feeling safe coming back to this group after they take us away.”

 

“Daichi’s right,” Ennoshita spoke up, resting his hand comfortingly on his Captain’s shoulder. “I’ll start, if that’s okay with you Captain?” Daichi gave him a quick nod and he smiled in return. “All of you keep talking about making me the Captain next year and… well, I can’t wait,” he smiled bright to all of us and somehow this was exactly what we needed to hear. It was just enough to break the tension that was hanging in the air.

 

“I was really hoping to get a boyfriend next year,” I spoke up, my face a lit with a blush so strong I could feel it burning away on my cheeks.

 

“You’re gay Hinata?” Nishinoya asked.

 

“Yep!” I immediately gushed.

 

“Cool! I am too!” He cried and ran over to give me a big high five. “What’s your type?”

 

“Hmm, I’d have to say tall I guess, cause at this point everyone’s tall in comparison right?” We both laughed as if this was some unspoken pain between short, gay men. It probably was. “I like colored eyes, brown like mine is just so boring.”

 

“I really like your eyes,” he cried out, throwing his hand over his heart in a dramatic gesture of shock that made a couple people laugh. “They’re so expressive,” he waggled his eyebrows.

 

“I think that also makes me a butt guy over a boobs guy, you know?”

 

“Preach it sister,” he cried out and a couple more people started laughing until everyone was sitting around in a giant dog cage packed full of kidnapped teenage boys talking about their gay fantasies. It was moments like that, having fun and laughing with my team, that got me through the next seventy two hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hinata and Noya would totally be the type of people to be extremely open about their sexuality. No joke, they'd probably shout their types to the wind in hopes that (cough Asahi cough Kages cough) would pick up the hint for once.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!! I've finally figured out how I'm going to end it so looking forward to sharing that too because it's actually a lot more clever than I thought it would be.
> 
> “You’ll be safe, Tadashi, I promised to keep you safe" I'm not crying, you're crying


	3. Brainwashed with Bleach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome welcome to chapter three!! This are really picking up from here, lemme just tell you.
> 
> I just wanted to thank everyone for all your lovely comments, I'm so glad you're all enjoying this story (and yes the Tsukkiyama is just omg these two are so cute) anyway.... thank you so much and please continue to enjoy the story!!!

“Only thirty more minutes,” I groaned from where I sat, leaning heavily against Kageyama’s back and playing Patty Cake with Yamaguchi.

“It’ll be the longest thirty minutes of our lives,” he laughed out as I somehow managed to nearly smack myself in the face. “I like blonds,” he said suddenly.

“What?” I stopped all my movements at his seemingly random comment.

“What you were talking about last night,” at first all I could think of was a extreme discomfort from sleeping on a cement floor with half the group snoring loudly right in my ear.

“Oh, the gay thing?”

“Shhh!” Yamaguchi hushed rushing forward to cover my mouth. “Yeah, that. I think my type is blonds. I’m not really sure if Suga counts as a blond but he’s  _ really  _ pretty.” Yamaguchi giggled when I sighed out in agreement as we both stared at his face as he laughed at something Tanaka had said. “And even though he definitely doesn’t count as a blond; Nishinoya…”

“Nishinoya is really hot,” I giggled out. Both of our faces were bright red but we just kept talking anyway. “Tsukishima too, he’s really mean but in a funny way.”

“Definitely! Tsukki is the hottest person on the team!” Yamaguchi gasped out before squeaking and covering his mouth with both hands.

“Excuse you, I am much hotter than  _ Tsukki _ ,” I told him in a mocking tone.

“I wouldn’t call you hot, Hinata,” I gasped out in faux shock, “but you’re definitely really attractive. More on the cute side then the hot side though.” He was starting to look like a strawberry being this red with all of his freckles.

“Thank you! You’re definitely cuter though,” I winked at him before sinking further into my back rest, “but on a serious note, Kageyama,” I shoved my thumb back to point at him, “is above Tsukishima on my list.” We broke off into a wave of giggles and I saw Kageyama and Tsukishima (who of course hadn’t left our sides since the lights came on) exchanging slightly bewildered looks. Yamaguchi and I smirked at each other, and knowing they were listening, I whispered rather loudly,“I think these two want us to have a foursome,” shielding my mouth with my hand as if this would make it so the two of them couldn’t hear me.

“Or maybe they just want to watch,” he responded with a wink and before the two of them could even process our conversation —and looked like idiots when they finally did— we were breaking off into another string of giggles leaving them at a loss for words. 

“Nishinoya Yuu,” came the voice from the intercom which immediately silenced our laughter.

“Noya,” I heard Tanaka murmur, taking his best friends hand in his as if this could protect him from his unavoidable fate.

“I  _ was _ going to do the pretty boy over there, Sugawara, right?” Came the ladies voice from the intercom, “anyway, then I thought, why not heat things up a little. We started off a little too slow for my liking, why not do two of the more interesting ones?” The female voice said before turning off the intercom in the middle of her burst of laughter.

“Nishinoya Yuu, please separate yourself from the rest and come with us. If you put a fight we will shoot one of your friends, if one of you tries to run we will shoot both of you,” he said, as he always does, before opening the cage and handcuffing Nishinoya’s wrists together. Nishinoya gave a brave face but it was obvious he was worried.  _ Interesting one _ , the ladies voice echoed into my head. Why would Nishinoya’s interview be more interesting than anyone else’s? And what about the next person? Who were they going to be?

“He’ll be okay,” Yamaguchi whispered reassuringly against the shell of my ear (and if I weren’t so worried about Nishinoya I probably would have gone bright red because  _ damn _ his lips were soft), too afraid to talk any louder with the masked men still in the room. I reached back and grabbed his hand, to give it a firm squeeze. Some form of reassurance.

Once the door closed we all tensely made our ways to a wall of the cage so we could see the nearest screen. Once we all settled down in a comfortable sitting position, Yamaguchi and I found ourselves warmly sandwiched between Tsukishima and Kageyama. Actions speak louder then words for them I guess.

Minutes later the screens flickered to life and there Nishinoya sat, looking almost hostile because of the way he was staring (read: glaring) at the masked men. The restraints were pulled taut as if he was trying to yank them right from the table. The man just smiled, the turned up corner of his mouth just barely visible from the angle of the camera on his mask. “Please state your name and age.”

“Nishinoya Yuu, seventeen,” he hissed out as if it were a death threat. “Can I make one request?”

“Sure,” the masked man’s smile spread even bigger.

“Turn it off, I don’t know how much you know but whatever it is; I don’t want them to hear it,” then he got a very uncharacteristically sinister smile on his face, “and when I get my wrists free I don’t want them to see what I’m going to do to you.” The way he spoke was even and calculated like he meant every hidden threat, every underlying promise, with every fiber of his being. It sent chills of fear down my spine. I curled closer in Yamaguchi —who did the same— and Tsukishima and Kageyama pushed us protectively even closer together still.

“I’m sorry, we can’t do that,” the masked man’s voice almost sounded like it had laughter dripping from it. He was  _ enjoying _ this. “Now, whether or not it’s okay with you, I’m going to share your life story.”

“It is  _ definitely _ not,” and if words could kill each of us  _ overhearing _ this would be dead from the venom in his tone. Reasonably, Nishinoya did not like these people. Kageyama actually flinched.

“You were born into a loving family, or at least, what would have been a loving family. Your mother and father had been deeply in love, and had decided to try for a child. Expect your mother died due to a complication during childbirth, which led your father to believe you had killed her,” his tone was one of cocky glee, “and he hated you for it.”

“Stop,” Nishinoya yelled out, pulling harder at the chains, “they shouldn’t know this! Anything but this.” Guiltily, my curiosity skyrocketed.

“Your father worked for the government as a part of the, at the time, newly-formed Wrongdoers Retainment Unit. He worked hunting down really bad people that the local cops were unable to apprehend. He believed you, his newborn son, to be just as bad as the people he hunted. So you could repent for your sins he trained you, starting as soon as you could walk, to be a killer. Once he hunted these people down, the ones he deemed worse than the others, he would order you to kill.”

“Stop it!” He was shouting, screaming, fighting against the restraints, blood from the gashes on his wrists dripping heavily onto the table.

“By the time you were five years old you had killed thirty nine people, by the time you were eleven you had killed eighty nine people before he was finally caught for what he had done. He was sentenced to be put to death, blamed for all of the deaths in your place. The police thought he had done it, never once stopping to question if maybe the ten year old boy by his side had been responsible. You broke into his prison cell, using all of the skills he had taught you over the years, to mark your ninetieth and final kill; your own father. You were later taken in by your uncle, and while he knew of your evil doings, never once even considered turning you in.”

“Please stop, please. They don’t need to hear this. They shouldn’t  _ know! _ ” He screamed, tears running down his cheeks as nasty memories were brought to the surface. He was yanking furiously at the restraints, trying desperately to get away, to make them stop. For it to end. “Why are you telling them this?”

“It can’t be true!” Suga was yelling just as desperately, shaking the bars hysterically as if this would bring the real truth to the surface. “It can’t be true!”

“Is this all true?” He turned his head so he was staring right at the camera. He knew we were watching —but did we really have a choice? He smiled as we watched our friend completely fall apart when forced to admit to a past he clearly wanted to leave behind.

“Yes,” Nishinoya cried out, the word barely understandable through his tears and the loud clanging of him trying to escape. It must have been completely instinctual to try to get away. “I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Yuu,” I heard Tanaka whisper out.

“Is the name of your uncle Nishinoya Kenji?”

“Yeah.”

“Is the name of your recently adopted sister Nishinoya Katsu?”

All Nishinoya could get out was a nod, he was growing more desperate, as if the worst was yet to come. Somehow I felt like we all already knew what they were going to ask of him.

“Is the name of your best friend Tanaka Ryunosuke?”

“No, no! Don’t bring him into it! Don’t please!”

“Therefore, is the name of your best friends sister Tanaka Saeko?”

“Yes, it is so please stop! Please, stop,” I couldn’t tell if it was Nishinoya, Tanaka, or a hysterical Suga who had shouted it but the desperate, fear filled cry seemed to echo deafeningly around the small room and straight into my heart.

“Bring them in,” the masked men said calmly, with a laugh of true happiness of the tip of his tongue. With a wave of his hand Nishinoya’s uncle, sister, and Tanaka’s sister were all brought, blindfolded and bound, into the room with a truly hysterical Nishinoya. “Here is your choice, whether you want to or not, you are going to kill one of them. You get to choose which one. You have two minutes.”

Nobody spoke. Tears could be seen staining the blindfolds of each person in there. Nishinoya was still screaming and fighting, his chair long turned over, his wrists completely shred as he screamed and fought. He seemed more scared of what he had to do then the people he had to do it to. Suga was still screaming and screaming about how  _ it couldn’t be true _ and to  _ make it stop he was only a child _ but none of his screams could reach them. Tanaka was on his knees, tears staining in dark patches on his pants legs as he gripped the bars so tight his knuckles had gone white. I couldn’t watch anymore but I couldn’t look away. Nishinoya shouldn’t be alone through this, he shouldn’t even be forced to go through this, and yet there he was. Terrified out of his mind with only seconds left to make his decision.

Yamaguchi reached over and frantically searched for my hand, neither of us able to tear our eyes away from the screen. When our hands connected we gripped each other so hard it could bruise.

“You need to choose!” I suddenly shouted, banging on the bar. “You need to choose!” I kept shouting it, over and over and over hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be forced to kill all three of them.

“You have ten seconds,” the masked man spoke and everyone stop shouting. Me, Suga, Nishinoya, everyone. We held our breath, waiting to hear what he was going to say, out mental clocks counting down the seconds. Tanaka still refused to look up.

“Katsu,” he spoke, his voice cracking and dry from all the screaming. Tanaka let out a pained sigh of relief, the news doing little to stop his tears. His uncle and Tanaka Saeko were led out the room and Katsu was pushed down onto her knees. The masked man walked out of the room, the two guards following close behind. There was a solid clicking sound of the door locking before the only sound was Nishinoya’s adment hyperventilating.

“What are they doing?” Suga asked, his voice cracking from the strain he had been putting on it.

“Your father was a complete nerd for the  _ classic _ wizarding series. So much so that you’ve never read or seen them, have you? I mean, your trigger is one of the most famous spells in the movie.”

“Trigger?” Tanaka finally spoke, his head whipping up to look at the screen. Nishinoya’s restrains fell away and he backed himself as far away from his next victim as he could.

“Please don’t make me do this, I don’t think I could survive doing it again,” he whispered, begged. I held my breath, my entire body going tense. This was the hardest thing I ever had to watch, it must have been hundreds of times harder to be in Nishinoya’s shoes.

“Avada Kedavra,” the masked man’s voice echoed throughout the room. It seemed to bounce around Nishinoya’s head, pushing out any sane part of him and making him lose control. He was bounding across the table and lifting her up by her neck before any of us could even react. There was a sick crunching sound as her throat was crushed in his fist. Her body collapsed lifeless to the floor, blood spilling out of her neck and mouth. Nishinoya, if it even was still Nishinoya, brought his blood covered hand up to his mouth and slowly, sensually, licked it clean. The masked man’s voice was heard again, this time saying in a happy tone, “it’s a matter of life or death.”

Nishinoya collapsed to his knees, clutching his head in his hands and sobbing so hard we could almost hear his mind breaking through the speaker. The door was reopened, he was re-cuffed, and the screen faded to black once again. The name  _ Nishinoya Katsu _ joining the others already resting there. I turned around to face the door and looked out across my teammates faces. There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t crying, not even Tsukishima or Kageyama could keep up their ever present stone-faced personas and had tears rolling freely down their cheeks.

The door opened many minutes later to a  _ very _ out of it Nishinoya, with bandage bound wrists. The moment he was pushed (rather roughly) back into the cage we were all, and I mean  _ all _ , pulling him into a tight group hug. We all cried with nothing holding us back around his still shellshocked form. Slowly he opened up his arms too and wrapped them around the body of Tanaka whispering apologies to all of us.

“I’m so sorry Noya,” Tanaka kept in response to his friends words. Over and over and over again until we had all run out of tears to cry.

“I get why you didn’t want us to know, but Noya,” Suga said, bringing his friends face up to look him in the eye, “I hope there wasn’t a moment when you doubted that we wouldn’t still love you.”

“Thank you Suga,” he cried out, throwing his arms around Suga’s neck and crying into his beautiful collarbone.

_ Beep. _

_ Beep. _

_ Beep. _

“No!” Suga shouted, pulling Nishinoya’s still sobbing form even closer, “I won’t let you take anyone else.”

“As promised we will be giving you some more food and water and allowing you a bathroom break. After that we will be  having the most exciting person, in my opinion anyway, have a go. Let’s see who can keep their sanity, yeah?” The lady just laughed and laughed while the food and water carts filed into the room. We formed and line and all received our food, eating and drinking as slowly as possible to prolong the next person going as long as possible but soon our food started dwindling and we were running out of people to send to the bathroom. Once Kinoshita got back from a record time of taking fifteen minutes to pee the beeping starting up once again.

 

“Hinata Shouyou.” I felt my breath catch in my throat and my heart skip a couple too many beats.

 

“Who did they just say was going next?” I choked out, turning to a fear-frozen Kageyama who was still stuck staring at the speaker.

 

“Hinata…” he whispered. I’d never heard a person fear for someone else as blatantly as he was now.

 

“I won’t let you,” Suga murmur with more anger in just his tone then I had even thought existed. 

 

“Suga, there’s nothing you can do,” Daichi said calmly to his friend, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. He was still weak though, emotionally scarred and mentally stressed. Too much to put up much of a fight.

 

“I won’t let them Daichi, he’s just a child. He has so much to live for, I won’t let them Daichi!” Suga shook Daichi’s hand off his shoulder and stomped to stand protectively in front of Kageyama who had already placed himself protectively in front of me.

 

“You’ll be okay, right Hinata?” Yamaguchi whispered to me. I nodded, though we both knew it was a lie. I buried my face in Kageyama’s back, reveling in the warmth it provided and clung desperately to Yamaguchi’s hand like it was a life line.

 

The door swung open. “Hinata Shouyou, please separate yourself from the rest and come with us. If you put a fight we will shoot one of your friends, if one of you tries to run we will shoot both of you,” the masked man said monotonously as if going through the motions of his practiced speech.

 

“I won’t let you, take me in his place, please, anything, he’s just a child, please don’t do this,” Suga kept going on, refusing to move even as one of the armed masked men entered the cage with us. “Please don’t hurt him!” were Suga’s last words before the armed man slammed the butt of his gun  _ hard _ against Suga’s head, effectively knocking him out cold. Kageyama didn’t even hesitate a moment to swoop down and catch him, even though he twisted his left ankle pretty badly in the process.

 

“If anyone else has something to say about me taking this boy,” he called out in a voice that reminded me of silly putty in dirt as he reached out to wrap his boney fingers around my wrist, “you won’t be as lucky.” And with that said he dragged me out of the cage. The moment I felt Yamaguchi’s fingers slip from my own I knew that my luck had run out. 

 

The handcuff that were shoved onto my wrists were just a little too tight making me flinch. The other guard just laughed when he saw it. “What you flinching for slut? You’ve got to be used to  _ that _ by now,” his voice was manic as he laughed, waiting for the masked man to lead me out, and I couldn’t help but flinch again at his words. Of course this would be the side of my life they would be exposing to the others, it was a part of me I never wanted  _ anyone _ to know about. Not Suga, not Daichi,  _ not _ Kageyama. None of them, and yet what choice did I have? Once the door was closed behind them, I was yanked down a long, dimly lit hallway and into a door that seemed to be miles away from all of my friends. In that room I felt alone with only the blood stain still on the table and floor from Nishinoya’s struggles to keep me sane. It was oddly comforting to have a piece of him there with me. Even if it was just a patch of his dried blood. As morbid as that may have been.

 

I sat down in the chair as calmly as I could fake it and they chained me to the table. I heard the click of a button and then he spoke, the easiest of all his questions to answer. “Please state your name and age.”

 

“Hinata Shouyou, sixteen.” I was genuinely surprised when my voice didn’t waver.

 

“I am now going to give you a brief summary of your past, ask you some simple questions and then give you a choice. Once you have made your choice you may return to your friends. Does this make sense?”

 

“Yes,” I nodded my head quickly, ready to get it over with. Plus, based off what the guard said earlier I already knew what was coming.

 

“Let us begin.” He drummed his fingers against the manilla folder that had magically found its way onto the table. “When you were four years old was the first time your father raped you.”

 

_ “You look so beautiful tonight Shouyou,” he slurred, his words feeling like needles under my skin as I sobbed. I’d given up struggling a long time ago. _

 

“ He had a bad day at work and came home very drunk and decided that he would just have away with his only child. A couple months later he did the same thing. Over time it slowly grew to become a routine occurrence. Soon every night he would come home from work and fuck you as hard as he could. A five year old who didn’t know any better than to let him do it.”

 

_ “It hurts, Daddy, please, it hurts!” It didn’t matter how much I screamed, I was too weak to fight back, too small. He just laughed as if this were the funniest thing in the world, whispering words of encouragement in my ear. _

 

“I’m gonna have to cut you off,” I said with an uncharacteristic smirk (which I had probably borrowed from Tsukishima) and leaned on the table with my head tilted and resting in my hands. “You’re already extremely incorrect.”

 

“How exactly am I incorrect?” The masked man asked, sounding both condescending and baffled.

 

“He didn’t just start fucking me one day out of the blue. He’s been making me do his dirty work since I was old enough to understand what he wanted.  _ And _ he didn’t start fucking me cause he had a bad day at work, he’s my father not some senseless monster like  _ you _ ,” I spat,  “he waited till he thought I was old enough to  _ survive _ and then slowly built up my stamina overtime,” I clicked my tongue just like Tsukishima did, as if I were mocking his intelligence, “and I thought you had done your research.”

 

“Did you really want to tell that to you dear friends?”

 

“What? That I’m the best lay they’ll never get or that I’ve known how to give head since I was toddler? It was bound to come up in drunken conversation anyway,” I waved one of my shackled hands nonchalantly even though I could feel my confidence slipping. I couldn’t pretend to be Tsukishima for much longer, I didn’t know how he did it. I had never wanted them to know this, any of it, but it was better to stall getting to my choice. In my opinion.

 

“Whenever you fought back he’d handcuff you, just like you are now, to the inside of a freezer. Sometimes for just an hour, sometimes he’d keep you locked in there for days until you were screaming and begging for him to have his way with you.”

 

_ “What is wrong with you, Shouyou? Don’t you like it?” He screamed at me, grabbing me by the hair and dragging me down the basement stairs. “You are to never refuse me again, do you understand that?” He shoved me down the last couple steps, the corner sending waves of pain through my ribs. He picked me up once again and threw open the freezer. He shoved me in, in nothing but a loose fitting t-shirt, and chained my hands above my head so I couldn’t fight it. “You can come out once you’re ready to admit that you like it.” And then the freezer door was being closed and locked. _

 

I shivered at the memory, flinching slightly when the masked man’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Which is why you have claustrophobia and the handcuffs are freaking you out so much. It’s also why you were  _ so _ okay staying right where you were inside that cage, never once even considering getting out, so you don’t have to go home to  _ him _ . He’d probably be so mad at you for leaving him for so long. I mean, you do still live with him on the weekends and during the breaks. Don’t you?”

 

“What’s this choice I have to make?” I whispered. I didn’t want to hear it any longer.

 

“He did threatened that if you refused to come over, Natsu would instead. You could never do that to your sweet little  _ sister _ . It was your burden after all. You could never tell anyone, not your mother, or your teachers, or any of your friends. It was your problem to deal with, plus you’d just have to wait till Natsu left to college and then you’d be free. It wouldn’t be too long. You wouldn’t have to be trapped for much longer.”

 

“What choice do I have to make?” I murmured, hanging my head. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes as my skin grew numb, I just wanted to go back to the cage.

 

“Not quite yet. We haven’t even gotten to the juicy part yet. Because, you don’t even hate him, do you? He scares you but you don’t hate him. You even  _ like _ what he does to you.”  _ Why are you getting so into this?  _ “And he thought that since you were  _ so good  _ at what you did for him, why not share? He opened up your legs for anyone willing to settle between them, selled his own son off so he could make some extra cash. He’s let any number of people, mostly guys, come over and have their way with you  _ for cheap _ . Though, you’re probably not worth that much anyway. Is it true?”

 

“Is what true?” I murmured.

 

“Everything I’ve said, everything you’ve said, do you admit to it?”

 

“I…” I could feel my throat tightening. I’ve never said any of this out loud before, I wasn’t expecting it to hurt so much to admit. “I do.”

 

“Did you like it?”

 

“What?” I whipped my head up to make eye contact with one of the guards, not knowing which one had asked it.

 

“Did you like it when your father beat and raped you until you could hardly walk? Did you like it when he would fuck you so hard you’d see stars, or when his friends would come over and have their way with you too. Did you  _ like _ it?”

 

“Not when you put it that way…” I murmured, hanging my head once again. “But it was my fault, wasn’t it? That’s what he always said,  _ Shouyou why’d you have to do this to yourself? I hate to hurt you baby. _ Baby, he always called me baby. God I hate that word. I’m not a child, I’ve never been a child. I had my childhood ripped from me before I was even in school. But, I did it to myself. Didn’t I? And if I was doing it to myself,” I looked back up at the now silent guards, “then I’d have to like it, right?” I could feel my cheeks start to wetten but I was too numb to really process why. Everything felt numb.

 

“Here’s your choice Hinata,” his words faded to the back of my mind then. I didn’t really process them, they made sense though and I kind of nodded along like I was in some kind trance. I could imagine Suga and Kageyama screaming at the screen then, telling them not to put me through this. That this isn’t a  _ choice _ it’s a pick your  _ poison _ , who did I want to kill me faster? I pointed to the guy in the middle and he let out some kind of sadistic  _ I won _ sort of laugh and shooed the two guards out of the room so he could have some  _ privacy _ . He just wanted a good lay, or at least a good blowjob because that’s all I was going to be giving him. I could imagine Yamaguchi burying his face into Tsukishima’s chest, refusing to watch. I could imagine the upperclassmen shouting and yelling to make it  _ stop _ that I’m  _ just a kid _ except I’m not a  _ kid _ . I’ve never been a  _ kid _ . So that makes this okay, right?

 

He undid his belt and dropped his pants to his ankles and I gulped. This seemed to make him happy but I could only think about the last time I’d done what I was about to do. It landed me weeks in the freezer after a solid beating, by the time I got out I could hardly move any of my muscles and my fingernails were gone from trying to claw my way out. The masked man shoved me down to my knees and grabbed my hair, he was going to force me to do it,  _ with all my friends watching _ , whether I liked it or not. But I’d already decided I would do it, so there was no reason to hurt me in the process.

 

I opened my mouth and swirled my tongue and hallowed my cheeks until he was just about to tip over the edge, and then I swallowed him whole and sank my teeth in as deep and as hard as I could go before he was punching me off of him. My mouth was filled with the iron taste of blood and I coughed some of it up onto the floor, but I couldn’t tell if it were his or my own. The guards rushed back into the room when they heard his screaming, both of them laughing at the sight —whether it be his mostly castrated cock or my quickly swelling cheek and blood filled mouth; I’ll never know. One of them helped the masked man to his feet and led him out of the room, the other went over to me and, before I could even try to fight him off, stuck a needle into my arm. The world quickly faded to a thick nothingness.

 

_ “Hey baby, this is my good friend, okay? Do you think you could treat him just the way I like it?” Daddy asked, kneeling down next to my ten year old self as I stared up at the looming body of the man who had just walked in the front door. _

 

_ “Treat him? But I thought that was our little secret?” I looked at my dad then, my eyes wide with confusion and hurt because that was our special thing, why would he want to change that? _

 

_ “I thought you said this would be quick?” the man barked out and my father stood back up once again. _

 

_ “Baby,” my dad said looking down at me, “why don’t you go to your room and get yourself ready? This kind gentleman and I need to have a short conversation before he will be joining you.” _

 

_ “Yes Daddy,” I shouted before racing away to the back of the house and climbing into my bed. That was the first man, after that they never stopped coming. We settled into a pattern. That was my life now, but it was okay because it was what I deserved. Daddy said this was the reason I was born, that I was just fulfilling my purpose in life, so it wasn’t a bad thing at all. _

  
_ When the man finally left and Daddy was counting up his earnings, my earning, what my body had given him, all I could do was hide further under the covers covered in everything that man had left behind. This was supposed to be  _ our _ secret. Not something he shared with strangers. But it didn’t matter now, I was already dirty and tainted. Plus, this was my life’s purpose after all, who was I to deny the truth? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes you all read that right, Yamas likes the blonds!
> 
> In case you were wondering, because I didn't really write it in there but a friend had mentioned that its too sad to not mention, Noya went with his sister because he thought that they would let the ones he didn't pick go and his uncle is a cop so he wanted him to be let go and come back and find them. This plan obviously wasn't very well thought through because what self respecting crazy person would just let them go? So yeah, just in case you were wondering.


	4. To Wake Up in a Room Full of Strangers?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they injected something in his arm...

“Wake up, please. Please, wake up,” someone kept whispering directly into my ear. There was something warm and wet dripping onto my cheek,  _ are they crying? _ , and they were shaking my shoulder. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out where I recognized that voice from. It was probably one of the people Daddy had given me to for the night, I probably fell asleep. It always freaks them out when I fell asleep.

 

“What time is it?” I asked groggily, sitting up slowly. I needed to play it cool, remember Daddy always tells you to keep up the act.  _ No matter what _ , he says. When I looked over at them, and their shocked expression, the first thing I noticed was that, no, they were not crying. I reached my hand up and touched my cheek where it was wet, when I brought my finger tips back down they were stained red. That was new. 

 

Then it dawned on me; oh god I probably fought back in my sleep again, hurt one of Daddy’s friends. That wasn’t good.

 

“What do you mean what time is it, dumbass?!” Someone else half shouted —even though they were obviously trying to keep their voice in a whisper. I visibly flinched, Daddy’s friends weren’t supposed to yell at me. It was then that I finally put the pieces together that this was  _ not _ my bedroom. Actually, pretty damn far from it. I was currently sitting on the slightly damp, dirty floor of what looked like a prison cell or a… dog cage? A very full dog cage for that matter. Usually Daddy makes them do it in my bedroom, that way I feel safe, that way he can stop them if they start to hurt me.  _ Only _ Daddy is allowed to hurt me.

 

“Um, where am I?” I turned to look at the guy who had insulted me earlier just to see his face contort in that of pure rage. I could feel tears start to well up in my eyes but he didn’t seem to notice.

 

“What, in the hell, makes you think I know that?” The guy was on the verge of yelling, whatever I had done must have been really bad. I shrank back at that but he didn’t seem to care, too wrapped up in his own personal emotions. Whoever this guy was he was probably going to hurt me. I was suddenly glad he had seated himself so far away from me.

 

“Kageyama, please calm down,” the boy who had been trying to wake me scolded him. His head was bleeding heavily from his head and he looked on the verge of collapse but he was still trying his hardest to keep order. Somehow his voice was calming, sweet. There was something oddly comforting about his entire presence, which was new. I never found Daddy’s friends comforting.

 

“Oh, your name’s Kageyama? Mine’s Hinata Shouyou, but you can just call me Shouyou. All of Daddy’s friends call me Shouyou. It’s nice to meet you. Why are you all whispering?” I asked, trying to take the angry guys attention off of his injured friends, that way he wouldn’t get even more mad.

 

“What did you just say?” The guy, Kageyama, whispered, much  _ much _ more quiet than he had been ‘whispering’ before. Almost to the point where he couldn’t be heard. Actually, he sounded scared. “What did you just say?!” He repeated, raising his voice and clenching his jaw (nevermind scared, he’s still pissed), springing to his feet, flinching when he put weight on his left ankle yet still managing to speed walk (read: limp) towards me.

 

“Why are you all whis-”

 

“No, no, not that,” Kageyama said a little louder, more desperately. He was getting closer, his pace slow and with so many people in his way to work around his progress was slow.

 

“Then what?”

 

“Before that!” He was so close now, he could hit me now, pull my hair like the others do. They always liked to pull my hair and Daddy never gets mad at them for it (probably because he liked to do it too).

 

“Oh! That it’s nice to meet you? Or, oh, have you already forgotten my name? That was fast. Bakageyama. I’m Hinata Shouyou.” These words seemed to be the breaking point for him because,

 

“What did you give to him!” It wasn’t even a question. He was pissed —except for some reason he didn’t seem to be mad at me— and banging on the bars with all his might and shouting at the top of his lungs until it wasn’t even understandable. The guy with the bleeding head seemed to be in more and more pain the more noise was made, which explained the whispering.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please stop, I didn’t mean to,I don’t know what came over me! I’m sorry!” I was screaming, sinking down further into the floor, apologizing profusely for the nickname —it had just rolled right off my tongue. Except… he was yelling about  _ giving me something… _ oh, he was probably going to hurt Daddy when he got in here to see what was going on. He was probably mad at Daddy for giving me that drug, he looks like a new friend, he probably didn’t know that Daddy gave me the drug. I didn’t want him to hurt Daddy though, it wasn’t his fault. It was mine, I could never last very long so he  _ had _ to drug me. So that’s just what I told him. “He has to give it to me, it’s my fault. You’ll like me better when I take it anyway, I promise. I’ll last longer, you can do more to me when I’m on it. You’d like that right, more time? So please don’t hurt Daddy, it’s not his fault.”

 

The guy froze, his shoulders were still shaking with rage and his breathing was still erratic but he wasn’t shouting or banging anymore. That was good. “What… what are you talking about?” He asked almost gently.

 

“I’m sorry I forgot your name too,” I said looking out at all the other bewildered boys in the cage, “I don’t usually do that, it’s just, I’ve never done this many people before, the most I’ve ever done at one time was three… there’s got to be more than ten here. I couldn’t remember that many names. But, your name is Kageyama right, I can remember that,” I smiled up at him, making sure to look up through my eyelashes in that way that always gets them excited.

 

His jaw just dropped then, he looked even more scared than he had before. He whipped back around and start shouting and banging and even started crying then. The bleeding guy was starting to look really out of it and he probably had a concussion from the looks of it. It was never good to make a lot of noise around someone who had a concussion.

 

“Kageyama! Stop! You’re hurting him! Stop! Stop please!” some  _ other _ guy started shouting but it was too late because the bleeding guy passed out, the noise seeming to have been too much. The  _ other _ guy, with a deep voice and a menacing (but worried) kind of aura, was suddenly springing forward to catch the bleeding pretty boy as his limp body collapsed. “Suga? Suga, hey? Hey, this isn’t funny, Suga?” He was rocking Suga close to his chest and holding his face gently.

 

And then, to further add to the confusion, as if Suga passing out wasn’t enough to stop Kageyama’s hysterics, something started beeping. Which seemed to be enough to stop him.

 

Some lady’s laugh spilled through the speaker, I  _ definitely _ didn’t know her. “Oh, you poor  _ baby _ . Locked in a cage with eleven other boys you’ve never met and none of them seem to want to fuck you. You’re probably so confused, you poor thing. You usually get to leave, go back to your Daddy once they do it. You want them to just get it over with, but they just  _ won’t _ . You poor  _ baby _ .” I subconsciously flinched at the nickname. I didn’t know why though, that’s what Daddy calls me, I love it when he calls me baby. “It’s okay, they’re not here to fuck you and you’re not here to be fuck, so everyone just calm down and sit tight, yeah? We’re doing our next one in four hours,” and with her laughter filling the room once again, the noise turned off.

 

“What?” I choked out. I felt like my world was crashing down around me. “What does that mean?” It didn’t make any sense. “I can’t… where’s my dad? Dad? Dad? Daddy! Help me! Help me!” The tears finally spilled over and suddenly some of the people were coming closer, people that didn’t want me. Why didn’t they want me? I didn’t understand, it didn’t make any sense. There were hands, hands everywhere. Hands on my shoulders and on my face and hands pulling me towards their bodies and arms and hands and… “Don’t touch me!” I screamed, lashing out, catching a couple of them across the face with my nails or in the stomach with my feet. “No one is allowed to touch me unless Daddy say’s it’s okay,” except I don’t think they were able to understand that. My throat was raw from crying and screaming and kind of had that phantom ache like we had already started, except apparently we  _ hadn’t _ . Why didn’t they want me?

 

“Hinata, you need to calm down,” the scary looking boy with a shaved head and red puffy eyes (why had he been crying?) said.

 

I kept shaking my head back and forth and back and forth. I was scared and confused and I didn’t know where I  _ was _ and I’d never left home before but people were hurt and scared where I was and I didn’t want to be somewhere where people were going to get hurt and scared.

 

“We need you to calm down, okay? You need to calm down,” he tried again, but he was too close. Too close. And why were they all so  _ young _ ? I’d never met anyone this young in my life.

 

“You can’t touch me, you can’t touch me, you can’t touch me,” I kept repeating it, I had to repeat it. So they knew, so I knew. Everyone had to know, it was the one truth. It was the only thing I could hold true.

 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, we’re not touching you. I promise, we’re not going to touch you unless  _ you _ want us too. Is that okay?” I looked up and locked eyes with a very kind looking boy. His face was covered in freckles and his hair was spiking out at the weirdest angles but he just looked genuinely kind. I found myself nodding along. “Okay, good. Now, what do you want us to call you? You introduced yourself as Hinata Shouyou, right?”

 

“Shouyou, they… they always call me Shouyou,” I told him. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why I was talking to him. I wasn’t safe right now, and if I got myself hurt Daddy might not want me back, he’d think I was damaged goods. I needed to get back before anything bad happened.

 

“Shouyou,” he tested the name on his tongue before nodding and smiling gently towards me, “my name is Yamaguchi Tadashi, it’s nice to meet you Shouyou.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you… Tadashi,” I whispered and dropped my head once again. That was probably the wrong move, he probably didn’t want me to call him Tadashi. This nice, nice boy was probably disgusted with me. It was just a habit though, Daddy’s friends always wanted me to call them by their first names. Except these  _ weren’t _ Daddy’s friends.

 

“How old are you, Shouyou?” He asked, settling down a couple feet in front of me with crossed legs. He didn’t seem mad at all. He really  _ was _ kind. I’d never met someone genuinely as nice as this boy seemed before.

 

“Twelve,” I murmured.

 

“What was that?” He asked and his smile faltered for a moment.

 

“I know I don’t look it. Daddy always says I could pull off being eight but I’m really twelve, I swear,” I told him, leaning forward a little, as if this would further prove my point. He nodded, as if this was a very important piece of information.

 

“I’m fifteen, I’ll be sixteen next month though. That angry one over there,” he gestures towards where Kageyama was still angrily in a cover, “he’s the youngest person on the team. He doesn’t act it though, he’s always telling us what to do.”

 

“Team?”

 

“Yeah, we’re the Karasuno Volleyball Team!” He said this with so much excitement and pride. His whole face lit up and there was a fire in his eyes, and with just his smile I could tell, this team he was apart of he wouldn’t give up for the world.

 

“Volleyball?” I whispered, mostly to myself. I had heard about it on the news sometimes, apparently the Karasuno Team was really good, a lot of people believed they were going to go to Nationals this year. “Oh, I’ve heard of you guys. I don’t know much about volleyball though, actually I don’t know anything about it but I heard your team is really good.”

 

He faltered at this but nodded along anyway. “Yeah, we’re the best. We’re about to go to Nationals,” he smiled again as he gushed. He seemed really proud of this accomplishment. I decided then that I liked him, he was kind and warm and had a nice voice too.

  
I slowly pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and crawled my way over to him. To my right I could see a couple people worrying over the unconscious guy. Over against the far wall Kageyama was glaring at some blond guy while the two of them simultaneously watched us like hawks. They were big and scary and both looked really angry and mean. I also decided I was going to stay right  _ here _ and here was where I had placed myself in the tiniest ball I could manage in Tadashi’s lap. It was there that I decided to fall asleep. Because with Tadashi was going to be my safe place until we got out of wherever it turns out we were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yams is Hinata's safe place and that's all that matters in this world.


	5. Sugawara Koushi

I dreamt strange dreams. They were dreams of volleyball, of the people I was in that cage with. Those strange people, strange strangers, they each had such strange personalities. The angry guy, Kageyama, he was my friend and he liked to drink milk. Always milk, milk, milk. And then when he wasn’t drinking milk a ball was flying above him and he’d do this thing with his hands, and suddenly it was like I was flying. I was flying and the ball was coming towards me with such crazy speeds but it didn’t scare me. It excited me. Tadashi was there to, he’d throw the ball up, run, jump, and when he hit it it looked like a circus trick and the ball would float across the court like it was hung by a string.

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

That noise woke me up, and as I was rubbing my eyes awake, I could see that I wasn’t the only one woken by it. “Sugawara Koushi,” came through the speaker. The same laughter filled lady from before. The room didn’t respond, they remained quiet, as if if they spoke, if they disturbed the quiet, then everything would come crashing down around them.

 

There was a rattling sound, it reminded me of Daddy unlocking all the locks on the outside of the freezer. Maybe that’s why we were here, because only bad boys got put in the freezer. The door swung open and in walked three masked men, two of them holding guns and the last one holding a pair of handcuffs. I couldn’t stop myself in time, and I let out a small whimper of fear. I hated the ones that liked handcuffs, that liked blood. I buried myself further into Tadashi’s chest. 

 

“He’s still unconscious, he can’t do your stupid test,” one of the guys, the one that had originally caught him when he fell, hissed out.

 

“We’ll wake him up,” the masked man with the handcuffs responded and started unlocking the cage. “Sugawara Koushi, please separate yourself from the rest and come with us. If you put a fight we will shoot one of your friends, if one of you tries to run we will shoot both of you, thank you,” the words sounded practiced.

 

“He can’t walk, he’s unconscious because  _ one of you _ ,” he looked pointedly towards the guards, “thought it would a good idea to give him a concussion.”

 

“Why’d they hit him?” I whispered into Tadashi’s neck, making him shiver when it made his hair tickle his neck.

 

“Because he cares too much,” was all he said in response. It didn’t make any sense but I nodded anyway.

 

“You’re Sawamura Daichi, correct?” The guy protecting the unconscious boy nodded. “Please carry him up to the front so that we may take him to the infirmary, once he wakes up we will resume with his conversation.” Daichi seemed to be okay with this, probably because he just wanted his friend to get to the infirmary. He gently lifted him into the air, bridle style, and then carefully, as if this boy were made of the most precious of china's, set him back onto the ground in front of the open cage door. The masked man handcuffed the unconscious boys wrists before slinging him over his shoulder unceremoniously and walking out of the room. 

 

“What’s his name?” I asked gesturing towards the retreating form of the unconscious boy.

 

“Suga,” Tadashi whispered.

 

“One ounce for every year,” one of the guards sang, “four ounces stuck in his arm. Look at him go, the little slut, can’t even get himself laid.” It was a bad song, it didn’t rhyme, the tune and rhythm were all over the place. He was talking about me though. Based off the way Kageyama and the scary shaved guy looked ready to strangle him, whatever he meant by the song wasn’t very nice.

 

“It’s not my fault nobody wants me,” I called after him but that just seemed to make them even madder and the guard just laughed louder. I buried my face in Tadashi’s neck, he was my safety now. In this strange place with all of these strange people he was the only  _ safe _ I had.

 

“Yamaguchi, I want you to get away from the door,” we both looked up to come face to face with the scary looking glasses guy.

 

“Okay Tsukki,” Tadashi chirped and moved to stand up with me cradled in his arms. He swayed slightly and if the scary blond, Tsukki?, hadn’t helped stable him we would have just toppled right over. “Thanks Tsukki. Shouyou, this is my friend Tsukishima Kei.” Tsukki just flicked his eyes over to me, the only acknowledgment of my presence he’d made all day. 

 

“It’s nice to meet you… Tsukki?”

 

“No. He calls me Tsukki, for some reason that’s beyond me. But I can’t get mad at him for it because he’s been doing it for years. You, you do not get to call me Tsukki. To you I am Tsukishima, and that’s final,” the guy hissed out and if my feet weren’t a good four feet off the ground I would have probably run away.

 

“Okay, I’m sorry Tsukishima,” I murmured and let Tadashi settle the two of us back on the ground, this time in the big-and-brooding corner.

 

“You’ve already met him but this is Kageyama Tobio. He’s not as mean as he looks he’s just a little rough around the edges,” Tadashi whispered to me, pointing at Kageyama. I giggled a little and nodded at this. Tadashi was nice  _ and _ funny.

 

“Tobio,” I whispered out with wide eyes, why was that name so familiar?

 

“He’s not that funny, you know. He gets most of his humor from this jerk,” Kageyama suddenly said, looking pointedly at Tsukishima.

 

“At least he has a sense of humor, you don’t seem to even have the ability to laugh,” Tsukishima spat out in response and Tadashi giggled and muttered a quick  _ nice one Tsukki  _ under his breath.

 

“Kageyama has a nice laugh,” I whispered. Everyone, including me, seemed to be shocked by this comment. “I’m sorry,” I laughed out awkwardly, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly, “I don’t know what that came from.”

 

“Why aren’t you freaking out anymore?” Kageyama suddenly asked.

 

“Oh, well, nobody’s yelling bloody murder…” I said quietly, trying not to make it seem like I was blaming him too much.

 

“Sorry,” he whispered anyway.  
  


“Oh ho ho, what was that? Did the almighty King just apologize? I never thought I’d live to see the day,” Tsukishima said in a slightly sarcastic, mostly condescending tone that was oddly nice to hear. I never thought I would find someone being insulted so comforting.

“I’m glad this situation hasn’t done much to hinder your sick sense of humor,” Kageyama grumbled and Tadashi just laughed which I could vividly feel from where he rested his chin on the top of my head.

“How’d we all even get here anyway?” I asked. They all looked over at me in surprise before nodding slowly (probably having some telepathic conversation) and sighing in unison.

“You’re in for a wild ride…” Tsukishima muttered.

“It all started out with a phone call…” Tadashi said dramatically, “Takeda, the faculty advisor for our volleyball club, had stepped out of practice to pick up a phone call. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be, we didn’t know anything at the time, and had just continued practicing. Nobody even noticed when he came back in, but when he called us over, we had been in the middle of a practice game. None of us knew what to say, something so important he couldn’t wait until the end of a set…”

_ “I have some bad news,” he had said. He had this haunted look on his face, and he seemed to be going over the words in his head. “I have just received a phone call from the Vice Principal.” None of us knew what to think, usually, though, a call from the Vice Principal was bad but this was already bad news. How bad could it possibly be? “This, this is going to be very hard to hear,” his voice broke, cracked, like he was on the verge of tears, “it’s going to be hard to hear so you should hear this now, together, before you go home and hear it when you’re alone.” Takeda had to take a moment to compose himself, “the Nekoma Volleyball… the Nekoma Volleyball Team…” _

_ “What’s going on?” Daichi, the team captain, asked. He was always calm and collected, a strong force that kept us all together. _

_ “They’re all…” he choked on his words, “most of them are… they’re all dead.” An uncharacteristic silence fell over the gym. The members of the Karasuno Volleyball team couldn’t tell if this was a joke or not. It wasn’t the kind of thing Takeda would do, and he seemed pretty broken up over it but it just couldn’t be true. None of them wanted it to be. _

_ “No,” a voice suddenly said, unusually quiet for his loud, boisterous personality. “No, that can't be true. We-” he choked as tears started to form in his eyes, “we were gonna beat them. We were gonna go get ice cream next week! Kenma-Kenma had just gotten a new game, I was gonna go play it with him this weekend!” He was whispering, tears spilling down his face, as his voice broke from his hysterics. He was shaking his head now, falling deep into denial, his bright orange hair shaking and swaying on his head from the movement. _

_ “I’m sorry,” Takeda whispered. “The police are still trying to find out who did it, there isn’t a lot to work with. It was like no one else had even been there. There aren’t even any bodies.” _

_ “You weren’t kidding?” Another voice spoke up, a small boy with golden fringe being pushed off his forehead as he ran his fingers through his hair. He sounded desperate. _

_ “Why would I be kidding?” _

_ “They can’t just be… dead,” he sputtered out. _

_ The gym door slammed open, bouncing slightly when it hit the wall, only to be held open in place by the very hand that had opened it in the first place. All eyes were on this person not a split second later. Slowly she raised her head, the shadows falling across her masked face doing nothing to hide the smirk gracing her lips. “Are you the Karasuno Volleyball Team?” she asked in a voice that was sickly sweet. _

_ “Who are you?” Ukai, the couch, said gruffly. Moving to stand as a protective barrier between her and his team. Quick to be skeptical after the news and the  _ mask.

_ “Your worst nightmare,” she said before she burst out laughing. Suddenly masked people were rushing into the gym, guns at the ready, pointing them at the team, at least one per person. “If you try to fight we’ll shoot you, simple as that.” And with that said more masked people rushed around the armed ones and injected each member of the Karasuno Volleyball Team with a strong paralytic. Each of them slumped over with wide, terror filled eyes from where they laid on the floor. _

_ “Were you the ones that hurt Nekoma?” Daichi hissed out, staring up at them in a way that was oddly terrifying for somebody currently laying helplessly flat on the floor. _

_ “Of course!” She chirped before waving her hand, “exterminate them.” The team was then scooped up into the arms of the masked people and the last thing they saw before they were blindfolded was the sight of Takeda, Ukai, and the two managers, Kiyoko and Yachi, being filled with bullets. _

“Then we all woke up here,” Tadashi finished, a haunted look covering his every feature.

“I’m sorry, that sounds really unpleasant,” I whispered, his story still echoing around in my head. They just killed them, all of them. Why?

“Guys, the screens are on!” One of the guys behind me called out and suddenly everyone was rushing to the edges to get a good view.

“You guys really seem to care about this kid,” I said pointing at the guy currently chained to a table.

“He’s the Vice Captain, plus; he always takes care of us,” one of the guys settling in next to us said with a sad smile. “He’s kind of like the team mom.”

“This is Ennoshita, he’s going to be the Captain next year,” the scary looking bald guy said, settling in next to Ennoshita. “And I’m Tanaka,” he was oddly gentle in the way he said it. I just nodded and sunk further into Tadashi’s lap. High school guys were scary. 

“Please state your name and age,” the guy sitting across from Suga said emotionlessly.

“It’s a different guy,” the bald guy laughed.

“You think they’re still trying to sew it back on?” The small guy with dyed bangs laughed out and a couple of the guys around them started laughing too.

“What are they talking about?” I asked Tadashi quietly. He just shook his head and pointed at the screen.

“I’ll tell you when Suga gets back.”

“Please state your name and age,” the guy said again but Suga just remained silent. “Why are you not speaking?”

“The longer I make this take the longer it is until one of my children have to go,” Suga said, pushing his chest out to make himself look larger, braver. I liked him.

“God, Suga. You are such a mom,” Daichi sighed out lovingly with a smile.

“Please state your name and age or we’ll shoot the amnesic one,” the masked man said, his voice still remaining calm and collected.

“Sugawara Koushi, eighteen years old,” he hissed out through clenched teeth. Tsukishima clicked his tongue.

“That was pretty low,” he muttered and a couple people, Kageyama and Tadashi included, nodded in agreement.

“Thank you. Now, we are going to have a short conversation, I am going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer them truthfully, and then I am going to give you a choice. Once you have made your choice you may go back to your friends. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Suga said slowly. He was going to draw this out either way, he really was brave.

“Then, please answer me this; were you or were you not born under the name Sugawara Mao?” The masked man was just calmly shifting through the pages of the manilla folder in front of him as Suga’s entire body seemed to tense up.

“I was,” he forced out.

“Is it true that when you turned eighteen you legally changed your name to Koushi?”

“Yes, yes I did.”

“You were born the daughter of the Sugawara family, with the given name of Mao. They were a very rich and prestigious family that raised you with very strong ideals. When you told them that you thought you might not be girl, that you were transgender, they immediately started sending you to conversation therapy. Their only child they subjected to torture to change a predisposition. You lived through hell your middle school years, and after your third unsuccessful suicide attempt you finally decided to run away from home, how am I doing so far?”

“Pretty good I must say, most people at least flinch when they get to the part about my ‘unsuccessful suicide attempts’ or get this disgusted look on their face around the ‘might not be a girl’ but you’re doing pretty good,” Sugawara said cautiously. His voice was shaking though, it must have been a pretty hard topic for him to talk about. “I think most people react that way because it makes them uncomfortable, you know?” Suga’s voice became calm, kind, as if he was trying to comfort us or even the masked man he was talking to. “Suicide is a touchy subject, especially when it’s a child committing it. Even more so when that child is doing so to escape their family. It’s certainly hard to hear and to talk about. People are so cautious of death, this whole fear of the unknown, so they don’t really seem to understand how amazing this unknown can be when reality seems like as bad as it can get. Do you know what they do to people in conversation therapy? One of the things they did to me was electroconvulsive shock therapy, they’d electrocute me to induce seizures. It was one of the ways they slowly trained my body to  _ fear men. _ They thought that if I was afraid of men then I wouldn’t want to be one.”

“But they didn’t want you not to be attracted to men, though, because what’s the point in conversation therapy if they just made you a lesbian? They started you on estrogen treatments and kept you on aphrodisiacs whenever you were in the presence of men. They messed up your endocrine system to the point where, well, you’re probably in a lot of pain right now, aren’t you? You haven’t taken your meds in, how long have you guys been here? A week.”

“My doctor said it was a miracle I hadn’t suffered any memory loss from the treatment.”

“You ran away from home once you were discharged from the hospital after your third attempt and were homeless until you started at Karasuno. You decided to join the volleyball team off a whim and one of the third years gave you a home until you could get back on your feet. You ended up suing your parents for child endangerment and unjust treatment of a minor and you were able to win, receiving enough money to pay for your surgery. You’re now the Vice Captain of that very same volleyball team, taking college preparatory classes, and working full time to support yourself.”  
  


“Pretty cool don’t you think?” Suga asked with a sad smile on his face. It was probably hard. He looked tired too, like just admitting it took some huge weight off his shoulders.

 

“Is it true that the former member that helped you out was named Tashiro Hidemi?”

 

“Yeah, I owe him my life,” Suga was sounding skeptical now.

 

“What’s happening?” I whispered to Tadashi.

 

“They’re going to make him choose,” he whispered back with fear dripping like syrup from his tone.

 

“Is it true that the doctor who agreed to treat you for free is named Takehiro Satomi?”

 

“Yes, I owe him my health,” Suga whispered. He didn’t even sound scared, he just sounded tired.

 

“Is it true that your mother’s name is Sugawara Mao, as well?”

 

“I was named after my mother. In all honesty it makes me hate the name even more,” Sugawara murmured but this comment didn’t sound like his other ones, it’s purpose wasn’t to stall, it was just a comment. It was kind of weird to think of it like that but I didn’t think Suga was trying to stall anymore, in all honesty I think he had just given up.

 

“Please pick one-”

 

Suga cut him off then, “when Daichi came in here I think you were expecting him to pick his mother all along. Daichi is a strong, kind man. He’d never be able to hurt his brother, and he looks up to his father. His mother would have the least repercussions. When Asahi was in here, though, I don’t think you were expecting him to pick his father, given that none of the options were who really killed his biological father. Which makes me wonder, what do you have against Noya’s uncle? His was an option twice. You were expecting Noya to pick him too, the options were unfair in that stance. Yet, he went against your expectations and chose to kill a  _ six year old girl _ just to mess with you. I guess that brings me to my point though, you want something from us. You told Daichi that you were doing this just for  _ fun _ but I don’t think that’s it. You want something from us, well not all of us, am I right? Just one.”

 

“What are you talking about,  _ girl?! _ ” The man hissed out with disgust dripping from his tongue like Suga was the nastiest creature he had ever seen which made the guards stand up straighter.

 

“It’s why you attacked Nekoma first, why you killed Ukai, Takeda, Yachi, and Shimizu, but not us. I’ve been wondering that, why them but not us? Well, it’s pretty simply isn’t it, makes you look pretty selfish once it’s all figured out, I mean you’re only doing this to-” the camera cut to black and the sound of gunshots spilled from the speaker. Then silence. We all sat frozen, hugging the bars in a white knuckled grasp, our breath stuck in our throats.

 

We sat in a stunned silence for  _ minutes _ , none of us moving a muscle, until the speaker from the room came alive once again. “Due to a selfish course of actions from our last moderator we are going to have to pull Hinata Shouyou back out to complete his choice,” the masked man’s voice spilled through the speaker then, the same masked man that had just been talking to Sugawara.

 

“What happened to Suga?” Daichi screamed, jumping to his feet. But no one responded.

 

The doors opened moments later and in walked the masked man with four guards instead of two. Probably an extra precaution. “Hinata Shouyou, please separate yourself from the others and come with us. If you put a fight we will shoot one of your friends, if one of you tries to run we will shoot both of you,” the masked man spoke and I could  _ hear _ my heart rate accelerate before I could feel it.

 

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered, or maybe I shouted it, but what I knew for sure was that I was clinging to Tadashi like my life depended on it and, from what I’d just seen (heard?) it did.

 

One of the guards slowly made his way through the crowd, forcing them to part before gently resting the barrel of his gun against Tadashi’s forehead. “You will either let him go and come quietly or come screaming and crying with your friends brains covering you, it’s your choice,” his voice didn’t waver but there was a cocky element to it that made me want to shoot him (kind of ironic for the situation).

 

“It’ll be okay, Shouyou,” Tadashi whispered but neither of us believed it. I slowly stood up, I had to be strong. Strong for Tadashi who had shown me too much kindness, Sugawara who sacrificed himself to buy me more time. Strong for this cage full of strangers who just wanted to survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trans/Suga is probably my favorite thing. On the other hand............. my hand slipped and there was more Hinata/Yamaguchi but I swear thats just their pure af Tsukkiyama is still number 1


	6. My Name is Hinata Shouyou

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So about the whole like 'Hinata's father abuses him' thing; I don't really think hed do that because his whole problem is is that he loves him too much and so anytime he does actually hurt/abuse him is in dire situations. Like the freezer he doesn't see as abuse but as a precaution because he knows what hes doing can't get out and he needs Hinata to know this and know that he's showing him love not hate. I guess, thats how I see it anyway...
> 
>  
> 
> Rant done; enjoy the chapter. It's sorta short buuuuuuuuut

“Your name is Hinata Shouyou and you are sixteen years old,” the masked man said, resting his hand gently on the manilla folder.

 

“You’re half right. I’ve never had anyone mistake me for  _ older _ than I actually am before though. I’d imagine that if I really were sixteen you’d be mistaking me for a twelve year old,” I smiled brightly, though it was forced —but in my line of work, who wouldn’t learn how to force a smile?

 

“We have called each of you in in a specific order. Sawamura Daichi, Azumane Asahi, Nishinoya Yuu, Hinata Shouyou, and  _ then _ Sugawara Koushi. Do you understand me now, Hinata Shouyou? This isn’t the first time you’ve been pulled aside, just as this isn’t the first time you met any of those boys.”

 

“You’re lying.” I slammed my fists down into the table and shook my head in clear defiance, and he just tilted his head.

 

“You know that I’m not, you can  _ feel _ it. You were injected with C3rT, a trial drug that causes temporary memory loss. It’s purpose is to cause  _ physical _ memory loss, not emotional. You still  _ feel  _ the same way towards all of your friends as you did before we gave it to you, you are just unable to remember ever meeting them. Actually, you are unable to remember the last four years of your life,” he slowly pushed the manilla folder towards me, “and if you need any proof just open this.”

 

I hesitated. I couldn’t tell if I should be hesitating or not either. It felt like that whatever he had just told me, there was something else behind it, a hint per say. A hint to what I could not say but a hint either way. 

 

I opened the folder and the first page was a sheet of paper, it held my photo, name, and a short summary of  _ everything I had ever experienced _ from my father and then some. I turned the page, a newspaper article titled ‘Avada Killer Captured: 89 People Dead by His Hand’ and somehow I knew that he was, in a sense, innocent. It was like a gut feeling, the feeling of familiarity you get when visiting the city your favorite show takes place it. To the right of it was another article titled ‘Avada Killer Found Dead in His Cell: Murder or Suicide?’.  _ Murder, _ my mind supplied.

 

I turned the page, on the left was a magazine cut out titled ‘Karasuno Volleyball Team Makes it to Nationals’ under it a picture of their team, not one of them recognizable with the exception of their number 10 (the  _ Small Giant _ makes history it says). I couldn’t think of a name for this person —and believe me I racked my brain for it but for some reason just looking at him filled my heart with pride and ...hope? To the right of it was another magazine cut out, this one titled ‘King of the Court Falls’ below it was another cut out ‘Kitagawa Daiichi Loses Prefectural Tournament’ and somehow I knew this was about Kageyama.

 

_ “Daddy?” I whispered as he kissed my forehead and tucked me into the bed. _

 

_ “What is it Baby?” He sat gently at the edge of my bed and rubbed my leg comfortingly. _

 

_ “Do you love me, Daddy? I was watching T.V. and the dad was so mean… I’m sorry, it’s just you didn’t tell me you loved me today. Do you still love me, Daddy?” Tears welled up in my eyes, it scared me so much thinking that. It could happen though, sometimes I’d mess up and Daddy would get  _ so mad _ and what if one day I messed up too much. _

 

_ “Of course Baby, I love you so much. You’re so good to me Baby,” he kissed me sweetly then, I’d never been kissed that kindly before. _

 

_ “You wouldn’t lie to me, right Daddy?” _

 

_ “No Baby, I wouldn’t lie to you.” He stood up then and walked to the door, looking at me one more time before turning the lights off and closing the door. _

 

It went on like this for a while, newspaper and magazine clippings, screenshots of news stories, photos of the Karasuno Volleyball Team ( _ The  _ Karasuno Volleyball, the one  _ I _ know, the one waiting for me in the cage). There I was, though I didn’t recognize my own face at first. I was  _ smiling _ and I looked more happy then I thought I could ever feel. My arm was thrown awkwardly over Kageyama’s too-tall shoulders and my other hand was forming bunny ears behind Nishinoya’s head. 

 

_ The doorbell rang halfway through but Daddy just screamed from the other room that he would get it. The man above me, one of Daddy’s friends, just laughed muttering that he’d finish what he paid for no matter who was behind that door, thank you very much. He was rough, mean, I always hated it when he was the friend who was behind that door. “I need you to leave, you don’t have to pay. Something has come up,” Daddy said suddenly, leaning against the doorframe with a conflicted look on his face. _

 

_ “Tsk,” the man clicked his tongue, “I’ll be out of your hair soon.” _

 

_ “Go get dressed Shouyou,” Daddy said before walking away.  _ Shouyou _. He called me Shouyou, I can’t remember the last time he called me Shouyou. That scared me. _

 

_ “Thanks again Hiro,” the man called and I heard the front door closed. I slowly, guilty, inched my way around the corner in my leave-the-house clothes. My father was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands, a basket on the table, and a slip of paper sitting next to him. _

 

_ “We’re gonna go visit your mother, do you remember the rules to visiting your mother Shouyou?” His voice was as tense as his shoulders. _

 

_ “Don’t mention Daddy’s friends or playtime. Don’t call Daddy Daddy. Only speak when spoken to.” _

 

_ “Good boy Shouyou,” his stood up then. He rushed around for a moment, grabbing his coat, the car keys, the note and the basket and soon we were out the door and heading to the car. “You’re in the back today Shouyou.” He told me and I climbed in the door behind his. He put the basket on the passenger seat and buckled it in carefully so it wouldn’t fall. _

 

_ The ride to Mom’s house was completely silent. Daddy,  _ Dad _ , was staring straight ahead, his shoulders tense, he looked angry. Angry, stressed, scared. When we pulled into her driveway he unbuckled himself and the basket and I followed him up to the front door. He knocked three times before waiting, his fingers tapping a frantic rhythm away on his leg. The door opened and my mother looked genuinely surprised to see us there, which was weird because Dad always planned ahead. _

 

_ “Hiro, Shouyou, what are you doing here?” Mom balked but opened the door wider to let us in. _

 

_ “We need to talk,” he gestured awkwardly to the basket in his arms. I gave Mom a quick hug as I walked by. We settled ourselves into the living room, Mom sitting in an armchair across from us with the basket sitting on the coffee table in the middle. “Shouyou,” Daddy handed me the keys, “go wait in the car.” _

 

_ I nodded, slowly, skeptically, before standing and leaving. _

 

_ After awhile I fell asleep, worn out from Daddy’s friends visit. I awoke an unknown amount of time later to be led back into the house. To my genuine surprise when I walked back in Mom was still sitting on the arm chair just now holding a  _ baby _ in her arms. “This is your little sister Shouyou. What do you want to name her?” _

 

_ My mind sputtered to a stop. Nothing could have prepared me for those words, and I honestly wished Dad had given me some forewarning before just sending me to the wolves. “Um, what?” _

 

_ “She’s your little sister Shouyou,” Mom repeated and Dad behind me muttered it again. I nodded and sat down hesitantly on the couch. _

 

_ “I… I have a sister…” I whispered to no one but myself. A giddy feeling welled up in my chest, a feeling of comfort and warmth and happiness. “Wow.” _

 

_ “What do you want to name her, Shouyou? You can give her a name,” my mother’s eyes were trained directly onto me and I bit my lip in thought. It never crossed my mind to ask where she had come from or why, a women I hardly knew, wanted  _ me _ to name her only daughter. It felt right though, I wanted to name her. _

 

_ “Natsu,” I murmured before looking over at her more confidently, “I want to name her Natsu.” _

 

_ “That’s a beautiful name,” she cheered before holding  _ Natsu _ out to me, “do you want to hold her?” _

 

_ I felt fear run through me at that question. I would probably hurt her, drop her, something. I was always messing up. “It’s okay Shouyou, she’s not made of glass,” Dad hissed out and I nodded. _

 

_ Mom gently passed her too me and she felt too light in my arms. Light, and delicate, like a baby. “Hi Natsu,” I whispered to her, looking down at her sleeping face. Her hair was bright orange like mine. “My names Shouyou, I’m gonna be your big brother, okay? I might not be here all the time and I might not be the perfect brother but I promise to protect you from the world.” So you don’t end up like me. _

 

There were pages about Sugawara’s court case, about Asahi’s father’s murder (the final kill of the Avada Killer), about muggings, about losing to Aoba-Jousai, about beating Shiratorizawa. There was finally pages, upon pages, upon pages, about the recent murder and kidnappings that had got us all here, and I wasn’t surprised to see my name listed under the missings list (labeled  _ Hinata Shouyou, middle blocker; jersey number 10 _ ) 10 just like the Small Giant. That filled my heart with joy.

 

I closed the folder and slid it back across the table to him. I sat up straighter, stronger and with more confidence in the cold metal chair. Even with the handcuffs digging into my wrists, even in a room far away from the people I knew but could not remember, I felt like I needed to stay strong. Whether that be for myself, Tadashi, or even the bizarre Kageyama and the other strangers still around him, I was going to be strong. “Whether I be a twelve year old sex slave or making history as Karasuno’s number 10, I am Hinata Shouyou and I’m not going to lose myself to you.” I could feel my team cheering me on from the cage.

 

“When you came in here before the moderator got overly cocky and you managed to castrate him. Nicely done, by the way.” (I was stuck in a moment of shock because oh my  _ god _ what did I do?!) “So, you have yet to make your choice. I’m sorry to say, but it will definitely not be an easy one, especially not until your memories return. Which they will within the week.”  _ Thank god. _

 

“What do I have to choose?”

 

“Your younger sister, Hinata Natsu. One of your closest friend, Kozume Kenma. Your hero, Hashimoto Kazuma or as you know him The Small Giant. Please pick one of them to be killed.”

 

_ No hesitation _ , I thought to myself before speaking the first name that came to mind. “Kozume Kenma.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“My name is Hinata Shouyou, my name is Hinata Shouyou,” I told myself as they led me to a different room than the one I had come from. I felt like I was losing myself no matter how hard I tried. I mean, apparently I wasn’t even  _ myself _ anymore. What else did I have left if not my name?

 

They pushed me in the door, a different door than the one that I had left from, and locked it behind me. I was alone in an empty room. “I don’t understand,” I whispered, “none of this makes any sense.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least theres a snail of a beach somewhere having a nice life


	7. Puzzle Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hinata is now alone, and putting the pieces together. But who goes next?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tsukkiyama is real! <<<<< what i screamed to myself the entire time I wrote this

_ “Shouyou?” She asked me in her usually bubbly tone, bounding up to me on springy feet. “Welcome home Shouyou.” _

 

_ “It’s been awhile, Natsu, I missed you,” I squeaked out, scooping her into my arms and spinning her around. She let out a chorus of high pitched giggles that made my heart do a couple flips because  _ god _ did I love this little girl. _

 

_ “How was your trip?” She asked once I set her back down. _

 

_ “My trip?” _

 

_ “Mommy said you went on a trip, with your team?” She’s growing up so fast, my brain supplied and I could feel my heart contract. “You guys were gone for so long, I was worried you got lost.” _

 

_ “It’s been awhile, how long has it been?” _

 

_ “A week, mom said you guys were training to become really strong,” her eyes sparkled as she spoke, proud and in wonder of what her older brother could do. _

 

_ “Yeah, we became really… strong.” _

  
  


My eyes snapped open and it felt like I had just been slapped. Everywhere. My entire body stung and my brain was foggy and mixed up and I couldn’t seem to collect my thoughts.  _ Strong _ , the word echoed around in my subconscious like a bleeding thought. I sat up from where I had curled myself into a ball on the cold floor and rested my head back against the wall with my knees hugged to my chest. “Pieces,” I murmured, “I need to put the pieces together.” But I didn’t know where to start.

 

I could feel it, a memory, itching to surface. It was something important. Really important. Life-alteringly important. I couldn’t remember what it was for the life of me. It was like it was stuck on the tip of my tongue. I groaned, I was really starting to hate those guys for taking my memories. I needed them back, it would make sense then. Until they came back though I wouldn’t be me, would I?

 

“It all started with a phone call,” I recalled aloud what Tadashi had told, the story of how they (we) were taken. That was an important memory, I could feel it coming back too. The echoing sounds of gunshots, the smell of gunpowder and blood, the feeling of hopelessness and immobility. It was the senses that came back first, not the memories. It was overwhelming. But this one memory, it was important. Even more so than when we were taken. It was wrapped up in sadness and angry and fear. So much fear. But so much love, something I couldn’t dream of putting into words. I knew, that when I were to remember this, it would change my entire personality. That thought scared me more than anything.

 

“I need to distract myself,” how long had I been in there, “I should try to figure out what Suga had.” And so I did.

 

I thought about my choice, apparently I made the right choice because they didn’t send me back. But why was it the right choice? It didn’t quite feel right, the idea of killing my best friend. Why not kill the Small Giant? That wouldn’t change anything, for me anyway. But killing a complete stranger, isn’t that morally wrong? All of this was morally wrong though. “What about what Suga was talking about, this person that kept showing up? There has to be a reason he mentioned this, he had to be hinting at something.” I wracked my brain for answer that, unsurprisingly, were not there. I dropped my head onto my knees groaning loudly. “What can  _ I _ do? I’m an idiot.”

 

_ What about those files? There was no reason for them to include those murder cases, those had nothing to do with me. Neither did Suga’s court case, so why? There were so many ‘why’s. Too many. It felt like the more I thought the further I got from the truth.  _ “Okay Shouyou,” I murmured pressing my hands into the back of my head, “why Kenma?”

 

“Because he was already dead,” I answered myself, almost not recognizing my own voice when the words fell thoughtlessly past my lips. “It wouldn’t change anything to kill him if he were already dead.”  _ The Nekoma Volleyball Team… they’re all dead.  _ Tadashi’s words came to mind then, his story, a character crying out about how  _ Kenma _ couldn’t be dead. But he was. By the hand of the same people who were currently holding us hostage.

 

I thought back to the folder, my memories of more recent events  _ Nishinoya and Asahi _ already having returned. The articles about their families. “The final kill of the Avada Killer… that doesn’t make any sense. At all.” I felt myself tearing up, it was too stressful, too many emotions, memories, too much all at once. I couldn’t do this alone.  _ We’re alive and we’re together.  _ Suga’s words of encouragement, one of the first things I remember hearing when I woke up in this damned place. Together. He was right, I wasn’t alone. They were  _ with me. _ Not physically, no, they took that from me, but mentally.  _ You still _ feel _ the same way towards all of your friends as you did before, you are just unable to remember ever meeting them.  _ That’s what the guy had said, so even if I can’t remember them, I can  _ feel _ them. 

 

“Okay Shouyou, what was Asahi’s choice? To send… someone to jail for the murder of his father. Yeah, you’re doing good. Asahi’s father; the final kill of the Avada Killer. The masked man said Asahi witnessed the kill too, but the Avada Killer was Nishinoya, not his father. And neither of them were options for Asahi to choose from!” I let out a loud groan and flopped over onto my side. “I'm getting nowhere.”

 

“Kenma was already dead,” my brain supplied.

 

“Kenma was already dead,” I repeated. And then it dawned on me. “So one of Asahi’s options was already in jail, or already in the process of going to jail.” Then I stopped. Everything seemed to click into place. A memory resurfacing that I wished never returned, but it did and everything fell into place. Why Nishinoya’s uncle was an option twice. Why Asahi, and Daichi, and Nishinoya chose wrong. Why they weren't able to make the right choice. It all made sense. I’m sure I was missing something, the holes in my past leaving some details as assumptions instead of facts. Suga would know all the details I’m missing, Suga always knows.

 

And then the T.V. I had yet to notice flickered on. Sitting, chained to the desk, looking ready to collapse in anxiety, was none other than Yamaguchi Tadashi. “Please state your name and age,” the man said, cuing my memories of the others to become more clear. If I wanted to really,  _ really  _ figure this all out, make sure I was actually right and not making things up, I needed to pay attention.

 

“Yamaguchi Tadashi, fifteen,” his voice stuttered, cracked. I could imagine though, after neither Suga or I returning —especially after all the sound effects that happened before Suga never returned, I would be pretty stressed out too.

 

“You’re unique Yamaguchi Tadashi, out of all your friends so far, your life’s troubles do not stem from your family. Though, you’re worried they soon will.” Tadashi actually goes bright red at that, his freckles making him look like a brunet strawberry. “You think you’re ugly.” I balked at the man’s bluntness and Tadashi seemed downright confused by it. “You think your skin is marred by your freckles. You  _ do _ have them everywhere, and you hate it. The other kids seemed to know this too, that you hate it I mean, and they’d use it to get under your skin. You were an easy target, all your life, even now. They’d beat you down and use you just with a simple insult against your skin. You’ve been bullied your whole life and no one ever did a thing to stop it; except Tsukishima Kei.”

 

I remembered this. Not an exact memory, more of a whisper in my ear. Tadashi’s voice telling me the story of how he met Tsukishima. “He saved me,” he had told me, a loving smile on his face.

 

“You developed a crush on him the moment he came into your sights. Or better known as Suspension Bridge Effect. Mistaking the fast rate at which your heart is beating and your shortness of breath that had been caused by fear as feelings. Tsukishima just happened to walk by, to save you, in that moment. That’s why you started playing volleyball in the first place, isn’t it? To get closer to him. He made you feel safe, you thought you were in love. Except over time it became more than that, didn’t it? You grew attached to him, you idolized him. He was  _ so cool _ and you wanted to be just like him. You had thought. It turned out that, no, you just wanted to be  _ with  _ him. That scared you. It scared you because you still, even now as I sit here spilling your past right back at you, you still think you’re too ugly to be loved, you’re still too weak to fight off the bullies that wait till you’re alone. You’re still too… you. You think you’re not enough like him to be with him.”

 

“He already knows,” Yamaguchi choked out through his quiet tears. “I told him months ago, he turned me down. Said he didn’t want to date boys.”

 

“Especially not one as lame as you,” the masked man supplied. Yamaguchi nodded and more tears trailed down his face, dripping off his face and onto his hands and the table. “Once you choose you can return to your friends.” The masked man sounded much gentler than he did before, like he wasn’t enjoy this as much. I could understand where he was coming from, making Yamaguchi cry was enough to break even his heart.

 

“Okay.” The masked man actually involuntarily flinched at how sad he sounded.

 

“Is the name of the man who taught you the jump float serve, made you feel like a part of the team, Makoto Shimada?”

 

“Yes it is,” Yamaguchi rubbed the tears from his eyes and look up at the man coyly.

 

“Is the name of the man you love Tsukishima Kei?” It was the first time one of us had been put into the choice options.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Is the name of the man who helped you gain the confidence to actually serve for the team Sugawara Koushi?” Yamaguchi just nodded stiffly, probably wondering, just as I was, where Suga was and if he was okay.

 

“Please pick one of them to be set free,” the masked man said. I choked on my own breath. Free? Like, released? That didn’t make any sense. If it were to follow what I  _ thought _ I had figured out, Shimada would be the correct answer. But if I wanted to escape, to get out, wouldn’t Suga be the best option. Except, they didn’t specify what they would be getting set free from. When I looked up to the screen, Yamaguchi had a strong expression on his face. He, somehow, didn’t look scared.

 

“Shimada, please,” he said with a tone of voice I had never heard him use before. The screen switched to a cozy looking store and we watched as armed men walk out of Shimada’s shop, him none the wiser that they had even been there in the first place. The screen flicked back to black and I read the names listed on it. Sawamura Miho, Azumane Yoshi, Nishinoya Katsu. Three wrong choices, three gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for killing kenma (may he rest in peace) buuuuuut as you can see hinata is a little genius and everything will make sense in the end


	8. The Nekoma Volleyball Team is in Room 6B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that hinata is all on his own with his memories coming back, can he put the pieces together in time to save his team and their loved ones?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kagehina reigns.

“His name is Kageyama Tobio,” I spoke aloud, not knowing why I had decided to say this but as memories started flooding into my mind there was someone staining the forefront of all of them. “He loves milk and is terrible at math because he gets confused by what all the different symbols mean. He’s bad at English for the same reason he’s good at volleyball, he over thinks everything.” An image flashed into my brain, something from the manilla folder. An article dated October 16th, a construction accident, three construction workers wounded, one with a severed spine.  _ Daichi’s father was probably paralyzed the same day we were taken _ . My brain didn’t know what to do with this information.

 

“Kageyama’s scary because he’s got a resting bitch face and he can be super blunt. He’s an idiot, thinking that people would just automatically like him this way. I didn’t. But... the more I got to know him,”  _ Asahi’s mother was already in jail for adultery and endangerment of a minor, _ there was a news article about the day his father had been arrested including this snippet of information, “the more I was able to see past this. He’s gentle, his favorite animal is the ladybug but he jumps every time they spread their wings anyway. Whenever he’s with Natsu he always treats her like the most precious of glass and his face gets all soft because he probably loves her as much as I do.”

 

“But what I’ve learned to love the most about Kageyama is his dedication to  _ me.  _ Which sounds selfish but it’s true. If the first thing I said to him during volleyball practice wasn’t  _ toss to me _ or  _ beat you there  _ then he’d drop everything to make sure I was ok. I always got super nervous before games and he’d always go with me to the restroom to make sure I was still able to play and then he’d race me back so I could get excited to play again. But, he would also bring me the notes from class when I was sick, with little doodles in the corners and tell me everything I had missed. Even on Saturday and Monday practice when I’d be exhausted and sore from spending the weekends at my Dad’s he wouldn’t ask any questions, he would get me water and carry my bag on the walk back home and make sure that I was  _ ok _ because he cared so damn much.” It all made sense in that moment, all the pieces came together and I couldn’t decide if I should be afraid or impressed. “So even if these people want to try to scare us, hurt us, separate us, I still know that Kageyama is probably banging on the bars screaming for me at this very moment because he always wants me to be ok, and right now I’m not and I need him.”

 

“Kageyama, I know you probably can’t hear me but on the off chance you can I want you to know one thing,” I needed it to be in a code, worded a way that only Kageyama’s dumbass mind could possibly understand, “the Nekoma Volleyball Team is in room 6B.”

  
  


_ “His name is Kageyama Tobio,” _ I felt my heart stop as his voice spilled over the speakers. The palms of my hands had been brought to blood by my endless banging, which only ceased when Yamaguchi was on screen. We all waited from him to return but he never did and soon Tsukishima was joining me in my screams to  _ bring them back here you assholes, if you lay a hand on any of their heads we swear to God we will not hesitate to castrate the rest of you, or worse. _ But they didn’t come back and Tsukishima was now curled in the corner; a scared and depressed mess as we waited for the next name to be called. My throat had gone dry and hoarse hours ago, my palms cracked and bleeding, my eyes bloodshot but that didn’t  _ matter _ . What mattered was that they were  _ gone _ .

 

But then the beeping started, and a cold fear washed over us all as we waited. Nine people left in the cage, six people left to be called. The voice that spilled out was not that of the annoying lady that had been the only voice previous, but that of Hinata Shouyou himself, speaking words about me I never thought I’d hear him say.

 

_ “...probably banging on the bars screaming for me at this very moment, “ _

 

“Dude, he’s got you whipped,” Tanaka muttered out in a half hearted attempt at humor.

 

_ “...he always wants me to be ok, and right now I’m not and I need him.” _ Those words sank into my brain, heart, and every other functioning organ in my body.  _ I need him _ . I felt guilt and something else, something indescribable, sink into my bones, he needed me and I wasn’t there for him.  _ “Kageyama, I know you probably can’t hear me but on the off chance you can I want you to know one thing, the Nekoma Volleyball Team is in room 6B.” _

 

The intercom was shut off abruptly and we all stood there in shock. “They’re still alive,” Tsukishima gushed, his voice uncharacteristically relieved.

 

“Or at least Shouyou is,” Nishinoya added, not wanting us to unrealistically get our hopes up.

 

“Why do you think they let us listen to that?” Narita asked, speaking up for the first time since Daichi’s role call. We’d been in here for  _ weeks, _ or at least it felt that long; we hand no concept of time in a cage in a windowless room, and him and Kinoshita hadn’t spoken in more than hushed whispers between each other.

 

“Why do you think he was even saying that?” Ennoshita countered.

 

“Circle up,” Daichi called, him and Asahi slowly making their way over, the rest of us following suit. Squished together in a tight circle, the remaining Karasuno Volleyball Club put our heads together to think. “Kageyama, he was obviously talking to you, have any idea at what he was getting at?”

 

“The Nekoma Volleyball Team is in room 6B,” Tsukishima added vaguely. I nodded my head slowly. “You’ve got to think faster King, we don’t know who they’re going to call next.”

 

“Nekoma’s dead though, these people slaughtered them, remember?” Asahi whispered darkly, his eyebrows pinching together in confusion.

 

“Kenma!” Tanaka shouted, his entire face lighting up in realization.

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

_ Beep. _

 

The familiar death toll rang out, signalling another member to be thrown to the wolves.  _ “Tanaka Ryuunosuke.” _

 

“Ryuu, please, what did you just figure out?” Nishinoya looked a mix between sad and distraught as his best friend was sent to suffer just as he did.

 

“Hinata had to pick someone to kill and he picked Kenma, remember? Nekoma’s all dead!” Tanaka said, squirming anxiously in his seat.

 

“What are you trying to say Tanaka?” Daichi stressed.

 

The door swung open and in walked the masked gun men. “Tanaka Ryuunosuke, please separate yourself from the others...”

 

“Hurry Tanaka, please,” I pressed.

 

“Kenma’s already dead, it wouldn’t hurt anyone to kill a dead man.” The handcuffs were snapped onto his wrist and the cage door was locked behind him, “what’s room 6B mean to you Kageyama!?” He shouted, his voice being partially cut off by the slamming of the outside door.

 

“Room 6B?” I muttered under my breath, hoping for some kind of recognition to ding in my brain.

 

“It’s got to mean something to you and Chibi or else he wouldn’t have said it,” Tsukishima condescendingly threw out.

 

“What’s that got to do with Nekoma being in it? They’re all dead. Maybe he meant all their bodies were in one of the rooms here,” I groaned, slumping back with a pout.

 

“Please state your name and age,” came the masked man’s voice as the T.V. screens flickered on.

 

“Why do you think they make us do that? They clearly already know something as trivial as our names and ages,” Ennoshita hissed angrily, the glare he was sending towards the screen something out of nightmares.

 

“Ryuu...” Nishinoya whispered, his back resting uncomfortably against one of the cage walls, he was staring half heartedly at one of the screens over Ennoshita’s head.

 

“Tanaka Ryuunosuke, age seventeen,” his face was stoic. His mask was almost as strong as the unmoving, white plastic plastered on our captures faces.

 

“Maybe they want to make sure we’re paying attention,” Narita responded gently to Ennoshita’s question.

 

As the masked man gave Tanaka a rundown of what was going to happen to him in that room all I could do was think about everything Hinata had been saying. “He didn’t mention the others, is he not with them?” I murmured to myself, my brain flicking around in my memories of Hinata, grasping at straws to figure out what he expected me to already know.

 

“Your sister is very independent, wouldn’t you think? She’s been raising you by herself since she was sixteen, I guess she’d have to be.”  _ What do you want me to see Hinata? _ “Your parents died when you were very young, your mother in a house fire. Your father couldn’t handle staying in the same place that his wife died and constantly moved you two around, until one night he didn’t come home. He was in a car crash and died in the hospital. Your sister refused to let that stop her though. No, she got a job after school and a second one on the weekends and has been juggling raising and supporting you and her studies since she was sixteen years old.”

 

_ What am I supposed to be hearing Hinata? _

 

“I know my own past,” Tanaka told the man calmly, “I don’t see the point in you repeating it.”

 

“Why  _ do _ they...”

 

“Shut up, that’s a dumb question. It’s obviously so we know too. We all seem to have something in our pasts that we don’t want the rest of us to know,” Tsukishima glared out, the sharp look in his eye acting as a punctuation to his statement.

 

_ Is that what I’m supposed to be understanding? That we all have something to hide? _

 

“Please do not interrupt me,” the masked man told Tanaka monotonously, “I haven’t gotten to the good part.”

 

_ Is it my past, not with you, but what I have to hide that I should be remembering? _

 

“Tanaka Saeko is your biggest hero. She is the mother you never had and the father your’s always wished to be. Which is why you felt you had no one to turn to when the girls of your middle school labeled you undesirable, when the boys called you an idiot, and when you got to high school the teachers called you a delinquent. You were given a stigma your entire life. When you decided to join the volleyball team, hoping to find people that wouldn’t judge you by your appearance, you met Nishinoya Yuu. He was in your grade, one of the best liberos in the prefecture, and he was constantly being put down for being so short in a sport that called for you to be vertically gifted.”

 

“I’ve already been through this, why am I being shot down again? What did I ever do to them to deserve such cruel words,” Nishinoya groaned, his head banging loudly against the bars.

 

“You two were fast friends, were you not? You thought that you had finally found your place in the world, you had a team of people that would love you and a friend that would help you through your problems. You were wrong, weren’t you. The team called you names behind your back, alienating you. And this so called best friend ended up exposing his darkest secret to you, he was a killer. You were going to be alone your entire life. But, none of this is your dark secret, is it?”

 

Tanaka’s eyes were blown wide. The information the man was spouting wasn’t just  _ information _ it was Tanaka’s actual thoughts and feeling. How long had these people been watching us?

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” squeaked Tanaka, his voice cracking a little as his forced the words out.

 

_ How long  _ had _ these people been watching us? _

 

“Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

 

_ “Say Tobio-chan, want to stay after with Iwa-chan and I to practice a little more,” Oikawa purred out, batting his eyelashes playfully. I should have gone home, I shouldn’t have agreed, but Oikawa,  _ Oikawa _ , the best setter in the prefecture wanted to  _ practice  _ with me. _

 

_ “Sh.... sure, yes, I... I would be honored,” I gushed, bowing so low I probably easily made a ninety degree angle. _

 

“What if I remind you?” the masked man practically purred to the shaking Tanaka before him..

 

_ “Iwa,” Oikawa sang, drawing out his name, “he said yes. We get to shower him in our superior knowledge, are you not excited?” He skipped over to Iwazumi’s side joyfully. _

 

_ Except, when Oikawa said a little bit more, he meant two extra hours of practice. It was pitch black by the time I was walking back home. I made a short cut through one of the poorer neighborhoods in town (which as a twelve year old wasn’t exactly the smartest idea). _

 

“You were thirteen years old walking home after staying late after school for tutoring. You were convinced you were going to prove everyone wrong and be the smartest kid in class.”

 

_ I passed a group of duplexes every time I took this path. There were six sets of them over all, except for the last one. 6A had been totaled during a party held in it a couple years back, probably fifteen different fireworks had gone off inside, tearing through the thin walls and the ceiling, or at least that was the rumor going, no one actually knew what had destroyed half the duplex. It’s counterpart had been left, miraculously, untouched and was currently being lived in. _

 

_ “Neither you or your slut of a son are getting any of my money, fucking worthless. You said he would be able to pull out not be so fucking drugged that he’d pass out before he could,” a lady screamed violently and came storming out of building 6B, “if I end up pregnant with a fucking twinks kid I hope you expect to see me again in the near future.” _

 

“A woman came barreling into you, knocking you right over and straight into a muddy puddle in the road. She didn’t even take the time to apologize. You were used to it though, most people avoided looking at you.”

 

_ I had been so shocked by what the woman had just said, the vulgar language and the implication she was making, that I was rooted frozen right there on the spot. She came charging right into me, her anger blinding her of my presence entirely. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing- Tobio!” she gasped. My head shot up at the sound of my name and looked up to meet the burning charcoal eyes of none other that Mrs. Kageyama herself, my own mother. _

 

_ “I’m so sorry,” a small voice yelled out. We both whipped around to look at the doorway, my vantage point from the ground and the low lighting not allowing me to make out many details of the boy. “I’ve never done it with a woman before but Daddy said that he owed you a really big favor and I really thought I could do what you requested and I’m so sorry to have disappointed you. It will never happen again.” The boy bent straight over in a deep, apologetic bow. The shadow of the house was taken off of his features then, the light of the street light able to just barely touch the wisps of his hair. _

 

“When you got home that night you were greeted to an empty house, as per usual. Your sister worked at all times of night to be able to afford everything for the two of you. You had never felt more alone in your whole life. Your teachers had all given up on you and your peers all stereotyped you. You never had a chance at being yourself, did you?”

 

“How is this my ‘deepest darkest secret’? All that’s happened is that I got shoved in a puddle, that’s not exactly gossip worthy,” Tanaka laughed out, his voice unsteady. The masked man obviously was just about to reach the juicy part of Tanaka’s story.

 

“You decided that all you did was hold your sister back. She wouldn’t miss you, you didn’t have any relatives to miss you, no friends, no one to leave behind if you were gone.” Tsukishima clicked his tongue at this.

 

_ I watched as my mother’s eyes glazed over in disgust as she stared back at the apologetic child. “Go back inside you slut, there’s never going to be a next time. You’re the worst goddamn lay I’ve ever had,” she turned back to me then and wretched me up by the arm to standing, “I don’t know why you’re out at this time of night, Tobio, but it’s time for you to go home.” _

 

_ “Tobio?” I heard the boy saying and I looked back just in time to see him getting yanked back into his lonely duplex. _

 

_ “Mom, what were you doing in that house?” I asked her, my eyes blown wide from the lack of light. I already knew, of course, after everything she had yelled back at the same child, exactly what she had been doing in that house. I didn’t want it to be true. No child ever wants to be the one to discover that their mother is cheating, especially not with someone  _ so very young.

 

“You lived in a small apartment complex on the wrong side of town, right next door was a multi-story condo building that had been built so many years ago in an attempt to turn the neighborhood around. It was vacant at the moment because no one that lived in the neighborhood could afford it and no one who could afford it wanted to live in the neighborhood. It was an ugly cycle. You broke in and made your way to the roof, eight stories up, as you usually did when your sister wasn’t home with the excuse that you liked to look at the stars. Except, you never looked up did you? No, you always looked down. Off the edge of the building to the unforgiving streets below. It was then, after being labeled stupid, unwanted, useless, a delinquent. After having held your sister back for years, blaming yourself pointlessly for your father’s death. After fifteen years and not having a home for your heart, and after countless times staring down the edge of the building at the streets below, this was the night you decided to end it all.”

 

_ “Nothing sweetheart, I was just visiting a friend,” his mother answered gently, her thin high heels clicking loudly on the street. _

 

_ “I heard you mom, why were you there?” I pressed, my heart slowly breaking as the forced smile slipped from her lips. “Do you not love dad anymore?” _

 

_ “I never loved your father. It was a shotgun wedding after a one night stand where the condom didn’t hold up it’s promise. I was stuck carrying a little mistake,” I flinched visibly at her words, “and your father felt like he owed it to me to help take care of you and we got married off a whim. Second biggest mistake of my life.” _

 

“The noise of your body breaking as it hit the pavement echoed throughout the neighborhood’s eerie silence like a gunshot. People came rushing out of their homes to see what had happened only to find the mangled body of a fifteen year old boy splattered on the sidewalk like a bug on the windshield. “

 

“Tanaka...” Ennoshita gasped and I could feel my heart break from the amount of pure sadness in his voice. By then in the masked man’s story several people were crying, including Asahi, Ennoshita, and even Daichi. Nishinoya was staring emotionless at the screen as if he couldn’t even hear it.

 

“They immediately called an ambulance and someone called your sister, who was completely distraught at the news of her brother’s condition. At the time, no one knew what to say. There’s no way it could have been a suicide? Right? You were just too young, you still had so much to live for. Except, as you slept in a medically induced coma for weeks allowing your body time to heal, that was deemed the only option. Tanaka Ryuunosuke had jumped off a building hoping to end his own life. There was no note, no motive. You just wanted to be gone.”

 

_ “Mom... there’s no way that’s true...” I could feel tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. _

 

_ “And now it seems we might have another little mistake on the way. We could get you two matching T-shirts!” She said sarcastically. _

 

_ When she started showing she told my father it was his and they forced elation at the prospect of having another kid but when the due date rolled around and the baby came out with glowing brown eyes and bright orange hair we all knew that there was no way either of my parents could play off the lie that the baby wasn’t that of the product of an affair. My mother wrapped the little girl, who she hadn’t even bothered to name, in a soft blanket, and put her and her paperwork in a cheap wooden basket. “Tobio, you’re coming with me.” _

 

“You woke up and immediately sent to a therapist and put on medicine for suicidal tendencies. You were labeled a suicidal depressive and for your remaining first years day were shunned for it. When you started your second year of high school you hoped it would be a new start for your life, people would be more mature, right? But look where you find yourself. You’re probably drowning in your emotions at the moment, having gone without your pills for two weeks now in a high stress situation, now getting your darkest moment thrown right back in your face. Is this all true?”

 

“Fuck you and everything you stand for you good for nothing, masked, sociopath,” Tanaka barked out, his eyes aflame with anger and, now that we all knew to look for it, unmeasurable amounts of sadness. What had caused our team to be so broken.

 

“Is it true that the name of the doctor who saved your life is Takehiro Satomi?”

 

“Yes,” Tanaka hissed out, immediately knowing what was starting.

 

“Isn’t that the same doctor who helped Suga?” I heard Daichi whisper, my mind reeling at the words. He was completely right.

 

“Is it true that your sister’s name is Tanaka Saeko?”

 

“Fuck you, yes it is,” he practically growled.

 

“Is it true that the name of your late father was Tanaka Milo?”

 

“Why are you bringing dead people into this?”

 

“The man who saved you, the woman who raised you, or the man that gave you life. Please, do not hesitate to pick one of them,” he gestured to the single screen in the room with them, it now showing an imagine of a decaying building in a decaying neighborhood, three people being held at gunpoint, bags over their heads and their hands bound behind their backs, toes teetering over the edge, “to take the same fall you did.”

 

“My father’s... alive?” Tanaka asked weakly, his eyes trained dead onto the man standing to the left of Saeko.

 

_ “Wait in the car Tobio so I can give this dick his grandchild,” my mother hissed out. I nodded slowly, turning to look out the passenger door window, wanting to witness the whole scene. I rolled down the window and pushed myself up against the door, hoping to catching their conversation. _

 

_ My mother banged impatiently at the door, and, after a few moments and taps of her toe, it swung open to reveal the aging face of a man. He had dark brown hairs and lighter brown eyes that I could see even from the car. “I told you I’d be back,” my mother bit out, a scowl framing her features. _

 

_ “I was hoping you wouldn’t,” the man sighed out tiredly. My mom pushed the basket into his arms and he looked inside at the sleeping face of my sister, who shared almost identical features to his son. “What do you expect me to tell the boy, huh? He was too drugged out to even remember the night, let alone does he know the repercussion it could have produced.” A memory flashed into my mind of the small child with big doe eyes shouting slurred apologies at my mother as she stormed away.  _

 

_ “I don’t fucking care what you tell your little prostitute but if you ever thinking of sending that,” she gestured violently at the basket, “child back into my life I will not hesitate to report you.” With that said my mother turned around and stomped away from the house, with me hastily trying to make it look like I hadn’t been eavesdropping. _

 

“You’re going to push them off the roof,” Tanaka weakly pushed out, and from the terror evident on his face we could all tell this was the same building that he had had a running with all those years ago.

 

“Do take your time to decide, if you wait any longer we’ll get the pleasure of pushing all three of them off,” the masked man laughed out.

 

“Oh... right, there’s a time limit,” he sounded so out of it, “my dad, please. It wouldn't hurt anyone to kill a dead man.” The body was pushed off the roof and fell limply to the ground, shards of plastic spraying out on the ground from where the manakin hit.

 

Tanaka never came back to the cage after that.

 

Except, I recognized that building, seeing it now, in broad daylight lit a spark in a old, foggy memory I had spent years forgetting. Across the street from a duplex missing it’s other half was a tall, too tall for a neighborhood, condo complex.

 

That was when I realized what Hinata had meant, except, it didn’t make any sense. There was absolutely that it was true, and there was definitely no way he had put  _ all _ those piece together. Except... it fit.

 

“The Nekoma Volleyball Club is in room 6B.” I knew what Hinata was trying to tell me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have nothing to say other than the next chapter was confusing to write


	9. When Porcelain Dolls Grow Chest Hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favorite chapter to write, no joke. This is the best chapter.

“Asahi, what was the street you lived in before you were taken in by Mr. Azumane?” I asked quietly, the cogs in my brain still turning.

 

“Cremer... why?” He asked skeptically. I shook my head, not knowing quite how to handle this information. It was just too far fetched.

 

“Daichi, your dad was a construction worker right?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“So did he ever work on a house on Cremer lane?” I asked, staring at the ground.

 

“Yeah, he built a bunch of duplexes on it but that was awhile ago Kageyama I don’t-”

 

“Nishinoya...”

 

“My dad’s last case was catching Asahi’s father,” Nishinoya whispered, catching on to the pattern of my questions.

 

“Are you saying that _you’re_ the one that killed his dad?” Tsukishima gasped out accusingly. When he got a nod in response he actually scoffed, “you weren’t even an option for him to choose from during his session in the big bad room.”

 

“Fuck,” I gasped out. This was a little too vague, there was no way this pattern held up. “Do the rest of you,” I said looking up at Tsukishima and the remaining second years, “have any connection to this street? What about Yamaguchi or Suga?”

 

“Suga lives in that neighborhood actually,” Daichi threw out.

 

“That’s the same street I met Yamaguchi on,” Tsukishima added, leaning towards me with his eyebrows raised. “He asked me out at the same park, turning him down is the biggest mistake I ever made.”

 

“My mom died in a car crash when I was younger,” Narita weakly said, “she was taking a shortcut in the rain and had got hit by someone running a stop sign. The car was coming off that street.”

 

“Oh my god,” this couldn’t be happening.

 

“I was visiting a friend who lived in that neighborhood,” Ennoshita said quietly, this was obviously something he was still broken up about. “We had gone out of a walk and some guys came at us with knives, they were going to mug us but my friend wasn’t having any of it and the guys ended up stabbing him. He... he bled out in my arms and there was nothing I could do.”

 

“Kinoshita?” I asked, looking at the final member of the Karasuno Volleyball Team.

 

“I... I lived in one of the duplex Daichi mentioned. My younger brother was playing with fireworks one night when everyone was asleep and ended up blowing himself and half the house up.”

 

“No,” I whispered. There was no way we all had a connection to this street. Especially not connections _this life altering._ “Would you say that these moments would be what they would talk to you about when they brought you back into that room?”

 

“Yes,” they all spat out, gawking at the strange connection.

 

“What about you, Kageyama? And Hinata? Do you two have a connection to it?” Nishinoya asked, it was the last detail they needed.

 

“Yeah, Hinata lived there with his dad,” I murmured, “and it’s the same street that caused my mom to decide to give me up for adoption.”

 

“What are you trying to say Kageyama?” Daichi hissed out, uncharacteristically cold at that moment.

 

“My mom had an affair and I caught her when she left, she was leaving one of the duplexes, the one right next to the one that had been destroyed in a firework accident. 6B.”

 

“What does that matter to Hinata though? How would he know the exact house number that your mom was leaving out of?” Tsukishima asked but the real question was right on the tip of his tongue, on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

 

“She got pregnant because of this one night stand and it was the only excuse my parents needed to get a divorce, she gave me up right after she dropped the baby off at the house I found her leaving out of,” my head was reeling. I never wanted Hinata to know this, and yet he seemed to remember. “Hinata lived in 6B, okay. Natsu isn’t his fucking sister, and I think that’s what he was trying to tell me with the whole 6B bullshit okay. We’re all connected, deeply connected, to this fucking street.”

 

“Natsu isn’t... that doesn’t matter. What does this neighborhood have to do with Nekoma?” Nishinoya asked with a voice full of anticipation.

 

“It wouldn’t hurt anybody to kill a dead man,” I said quoting Tanaka snugly, though the snugness was short lived. “These people seem to know everything about our lives, no matter how early our hardship occurred, and under some crazy coincidence, all of the terrible things that have happened in our lives connect to this street.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense Kageyama, why would that matter?” Ennoshita pointed out.

 

“I think they started watching us on this street, I don’t know why, but they must have been on his street when one of these terrible things happened. It must have been the start of this crazy ass ordeal. That’s the only reason I can think of,” I responded, my brain trying to figure out if what I had said even made any sense.

 

_Beep._

 

_Beep._

 

_Beep._

 

 _“Kageyama Tobio,”_ the laughing lady spat.

 

“I don’t care if you guys hear about my terrible past, you’ve already heard enough to know what it’s about,” I told them in a hushed, stressed voice before pulling off a Tsukishima worthy smirk, “I’m going to answer their stupid choice game exactly the way they want me to, and then we’re going to escape.”

 

“You’re insane,” Nishinoya gasped.

 

“I like your spunk, King. What do we need to do?” Tsukishima said with such a dark smirk I actually felt excitement course through my veins.

 

“Here’s what I need you to do...”

  


Ennoshita’s question rang in my mind as I was lead down a dimly lit, windowless hallway to a door. As one of the guards unlocked it I quickly scanned the hallway for other doors and cameras only to find it, conveniently, vacant. _Why would that matter?_ Ennoshita had asked. Why _would_ it matter that this group seemed to know all of the terrible things that had happened in our lives? The only pattern to this information being this god forsaken street? How did it all connect?

 

I was placed in a stiff metal chair and the cuffs were locked onto the table, sealing my ability to escape. Or so they thought. The masked man gently placed himself on the chair in front of me and set a manilla folder on the table. To my left, there was a camera resting haphazardly on the wall above my head and to my right, there was a T.V. screen. There were no windows, the only escape being through the locked door blocked by two armed guards, locked and blocked from the inside.

 

“Please state your name and age,” the masked man said, his eyes twinkling under his mask.

 

“Kageyama Tobio, age fifteen,” I said, keeping my voice steady and our eye contact constant. I wasn’t going to let them get under my skin, if I wanted this to work I needed to remain focused.

 

“I am going to give you a short summary of your past, ask you a few simple questions, and then give you a choice. Once you have made your choice you may return to your friends. Does this all make sense?”

 

“No, it doesn’t. I’m confused about one thing,” I told him, still completely emotionless.

 

“Please, ask away, we do not want to create any unnecessary confusion before we begin.” The masked man gestured towards me with his hand, opting for me to speak.

 

 _Good,_ I thought, smirking internally. “You said that once I have made my choice that I may return to my friends,” I let a confused look pass over my face, “but is there, at any point during the choosing process, something that I may say or do that could result in me not being returned to the cage with my friends?” I carefully constructed the wording and emotions displayed by the question, making it so they could only answer how I wanted them to.

 

“I am not obligated to answer this question.” Or they could just avoid answering all together. “It is time to begin. Your parents met in a bar when they were in college, they were both tipsy and decided to have a one night stand. They used the appropriate means of safe sex, your mother was on the birth control pill and your father used a condom, but alas a few weeks later your mother discovered that she was pregnant. How many different bars did she travel to and people did she talk to to find your father again? They married immediately but could never learn to love each other, actually, over time, they came to despise each other. The one thing they could agree on though was that their lives were so unhappy because of _you_.”

 

“You’re always hearing those stories of shotgun weddings where they end up falling in love anyway over their love for their child or end up getting a divorce and fighting over custody. It’s kind of hard to imagine that they both didn’t have a single bone in their body capable of happiness.” I smiled pityingly at the masked man and he quirked his eyebrow in response. “Did you go through something similar? Lack of parental love isn’t as uncommon as one would think, we’ve already had multiple examples,” I gestured at the camera, “of terrible parenting. I’m sure you went through something similar. But, you weren’t as strong as we were, were you? You let all of the bad in your life slowly pulled you apart until that’s all that was left of you.”

 

“They started sleeping around and soon your mother found herself, once again, pregnant with the child of one of her one night stands. She played it off as your fathers, but they hadn’t slept together for years. Once the baby was born, with features matching those of the biological father’s so greatly all three of you knew there was no point in hiding it. Your father abandoned you and your mother almost the next day. Your mother loathed him after that, truly hated everything about him, which included you.”

 

“Does my mother remind you of yours? Your tone of voice is so personal,” I almost giggled as I watched his eyes narrow, “she must have been an amazing lady. Putting up with you so long. Mine, she was weak. She let herself fall trap to the dream of a happy family life, she thought it would just fall on her lap because she had a husband and baby on the way, what more could she ask for?”

 

“She immediately threw her newborn daughter back at the home she had been made in, the same home you discovered your mother was cheating in. She then, no hesitation, brought straight to the nearest adoption clinic and put you into the foster system. You never even really got to meet your sister, and you haven’t seen your parents since.”

 

“It sounds like you’re about to reach the whole dark secret portion of our talk, I’m looking forward to it. This really is just a fascinating fact.”

 

“You’ve known about what Hinata’s father had been doing to him longer than you’ve even known Hinata. Though, I don’t think you knew the full extent of what had been happening to him until the other day when Hinata sat in the same chair that you find yourself in now. It was a memory you had been forcing out of your mind for years when it magically resurfaced, the first time you had gone home with your dear friend Hinata Shouyou. You met his little sister, Natsu, and you knew. You recognized her more than you thought it would have been possible, it had been _years_ and she had been a newborn baby the last and only time you had ever seen her. All the piece fell together when you learned that Hinata’s parents had divorced when he was very young and that he didn’t even start living with his mom until that year because it was closer to the school. You remembered the little boy who had come running out of the house you believed had destroyed your family, screaming apologies. And you remembered his bright orange hair.”

 

“It was obviously something he didn’t remember, no one ever told him and he never put the pieces together. I didn’t know what it meant, any of it or how it all related. All I knew was that he was the sixteen-year-old _father_ of my little sister, and he didn’t even know. I never had the heart to tell him. Plus, I never understood _how_ or _why_ my mother had been in that house with him. Not until you spilled it all to us not a couple hours prior to now.” I could almost feel Tsukishima’s shock at the big words I had been using while in this room. I needed to do three things while I was in here. First, I had to buy Tsukishima time to explain the plan to the others and prepare to execute it. Second, I had to get under the proctors skin, make it so the three men in front of me weren’t at the top of their game. Finally, I needed to escape these handcuffs and steal one of their guns.

 

“Has everything that both you and I said been the truth?” The masked man asked, impatiently tapping his fingers on the top of the manila folder. The rhythm the noise created made the whole scene feel like it was in slow motion.

 

“Yes, nothing but the truth,” I told him, counting the taps as I picked the lock on the handcuffs carefully to the beat, as to not make any other sound.

 

“Is the name of your mother, who abandoned you, Shinobu Kaori?”

 

“Yeah, I’ve never heard her maiden name before. Have you been keeping close tabs on her as well?” I said gently, still refusing to break eye contact with him and it seemed to be highly unnerving.

 

“Is the name of your dear younger sister, and the daughter of the man you love, Hinata Natsu?”

 

“That was always something I wondered about, you know. If Hinata and I started dating, oh god if we married, I would be Natsu’s brother and father, and Hinata sorta would be too, you know. Since they both think they’re siblings. It’d be a really weird relationship mix.”

 

“Is the name of your father, who left you, Kageyama Rin?”

 

“Yes, it is. Oh, this is exciting! Do I get to choose to murder, maim, or break them? I’ve been looking forward to this part of our little interview since you brought Daichi in!”

 

“Please choose one of these three, your mother, father, or sister, to spend a night in the freezer that you abandoned Hinata Shouyou in. Even though you knew, vaguely but knew, what was happening to him, you did nothing. You must repent for doing nothing to save him, please doom one of your family members to the same fate.” I didn’t see that coming. Are they trying to tell me that one of these people is actually chained up and locked in a freezer at this very moment? Because I didn’t save Hinata?

 

In that moment, Hinata’s interview flashed into my mind, some of the things the masked man had said to him making a startling appearance. _You were so okay staying right where you were inside that cage, never once even considering getting out, so you don’t have to go home to him. He’d probably be so mad at you for leaving him for so long. He did threaten that if you refused to come over, Natsu would instead._ A small part of me died then, thinking that Natsu was at Hinata’s dad’s house, experiencing the terrible things he had been living through for years.

 

“Hinata,” voice caught in my throat, “Hinata Natsu.” I had never wanted to kill this man more.

 

But, as the screen switched to show that of a basement, a meat freezer sitting in the middle of it, light flooding into the room as a young girl, _Natsu,_ was dragged down the stairs and thrown into the freezer, I knew this was my chance. The guards and the masked man were both staring at the screen watching Natsu struggle and scream in the freezer. I had seconds. I yanked my wrists out of the cuffs and, before any of them could react, grabbed my chair and swung it around to hit the masked man in the head so hard he immediately blacked out. In the seconds it took the guards to process what had just happened I flipped the table up and kicked it towards them as hard as I possibly could. It slammed into their knee caps, knocking one of them over and sending him and his gun sprawling at my feet. The second guard was recovering quickly, shaking off the pain and raising his gun towards me, and I knew time was of the essence. I swooped down, and did a beautiful rolling grab of the gun, landing with it placed in the center of his chest. “Drop the gun, gently, and I might spare you,” I hissed at the man, glaring daggers into his eyes. His trembling hands hesitantly set the gun at his side, not once breaking eye contact. That is, until I pulled the trigger. I turned around and kicked the guard on the ground in the nose, shot the security camera, picked up the second gun and the keys off the guard's body before swiftly making my way out of the room.

 

Life was an action movie as I made my way back towards the room my friends were locked in. I had a limited amount of time before more guards arrived, who probably had more guns and skill than I did. I sprinted back down the hallway, listening for footsteps. I reached the room everyone was locked in and jammed the key in the keyhole, my heart beating too fast to be healthy and adrenaline keeping me alive. Hopefully. I burst into the room to find a dead, mutilated guard lying on the floor and everyone waiting outside the cage for me.

 

“You were right King, they were going to come for us when you tried to escape,” Tsukishima spoke, his voice coming out in pants, blood splattered across his front and Nishinoya’s hands.

 

“I don’t know if they’re gonna come for us so we have to move fast to find the others,” I told them, and pointed my gun straight out the door, ready to protect. We moved fast, Tsukishima in charge of using Nishinoya’s trigger if times were to get too dangerous and Ennoshita holding up the back with the second gun. We moved up the hallway, completely on edge, the eight of us running on adrenaline and fear, ready to fight for our lives to finally escape.

 

That was when we heard it. A scream so loud, blood-curdling, terror-filled that it made our rapidly beating hearts completely come to a stop.

 

“HINATA!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I could picture while writing this was those hardcore ninja/secret agent movies and Kag's is diving around corners and Noya going all assassin and Tsukki having his heart ripped out and stomped on like theres no tomorrow. This was a little too fun to write (and what was actually in room 6B gave me nightmares but I shouldn't admit that)


	10. What Would You do When All Your Friends are Depending on You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ninja kags part 2

“Kageyama! Wait! We don’t know what’s down there!” Daichi was shouting after me but it didn’t matter. I knew what I was running towards, Hinata, anything else I ran into didn’t matter. I could hear the pitter patter of the remaining team’s footfalls behind me as I turned another corner following the echo of Hinata’s scream.

 

“Watch out!” Someone shouted before I was being shoved to the ground, my teeth clanging together painfully as my chin hit the floor. I rolled over to see as Ennoshita collapsed to his knees hugging his shoulder as blood gushed out of it. Behind him, splattered in his blood from the bullets exit, was Kinoshita with the very same bullet buried deep in his chest.

 

“No,” I whispered before whipping around to see where the bullet had even come from.

 

“Noya!” Tsukishima shouted, reaching to try to catch his friend as he bolted past him ready to  _ slaughter _ the men that had shot his friends. “Avada Kedavra!” Tsukishima shouted in a last ditch effort to give Noya some help as he ran towards the two guards ready to fill his body with bullets.

 

I wrenched the gun slung over my shoulder into my hands, loosely aimed, and fired. The bullet sank deep into that of the nearest guards leg and I easily repeated the action with the second one the second before he probably would have pulled the trigger on Noya. Then I looked away, not wanting to watch, as their gurgling, blood filled screams were enough for me to know Noya had reached them.

 

“It’s a matter of life or death,” Tsukishima spoke shakily, his eyes blown wide and bloodshot as he fought back tears.

 

“Thank you,” Noya whispered from where he stood, covered in blood, in front of a door labeled 6B. “Shouyou,” he shouted, banging on the door, “are you in there?”

 

“Noya,” came a weak voice from inside. Noya pushed the door open and Hinata immediately came falling out, wrapping his arms around Noya’s neck and burying his face. “You guys are ok. I was so worried.”

 

“Hinata,” I said softly. His head popped up, eyes puffy and red and cheeks tear streaked. “I’m so sorry,”  _ for not saving you.  _ A small smile broke out on his face and he was rushing towards me in a jumping hug before my brain could even process what had happened.

 

“I missed you so much Bakageyama,” he gushed into my neck. Once I broke out of my shocked stupor I gently placed my arms around his back and buried my face in his wild orange hair.

 

“As sweet as your little reunion is,” Tsukishima spat out, seemingly back to his usual rude self, “we still need to go find the others.” At that Hinata frozen, I could  _ feel _ as all of his muscles stiffened and, with him still so close to my ear, I could hear as he stopped breathing.

 

“I’m sorry, Tsukishima,” Hinata muttered, back out of my grasp to look at the rest of the team, fresh tears forming in the corners of his eyes, “but the others are dead.”

 

“Suga?” Daichi asked, looking like he was about to fall right back into the unresponsive state he had been in after he had been the first to experience the room.

 

“And Yamaguchi and Tanaka, I’m so sorry,” his voice broke, “I couldn’t do anything. They were right there and I-” he cut himself off, casting his eye’s to the ground.

 

“We need to get out of here before the rest of us join them,” Ennoshita spoke, still cradling his wounded shoulder.

 

“Enno, Hisashi... he isn’t breathing anymore,” we all looked down at Narita, holding Kinoshita to his chest, rocking him gently. There was no rise and fall of Kinoshita’s chest. He too was dead.

 

“Come on,” I whispered, offering a hand to Ennoshita, “we need to get going.”

 

Narita only nodded. He gently set Kinoshita to the ground and, with a hand from Hinata, brought himself to standing. “We need to find a way out, “ Noya hissed. He was angry, we all were. These people were sadistic, psychopathic, murderers.

 

Luckily there weren’t any cameras in the hallways as we wandered, the place seeming inescapable. Somehow, whether it be by a stroke of luck or misfortune, we found an exit. That was blocked by probably six guards. With the only person who knew how to shoot being me (my last foster parent had been a war veteran and had been very avid about me learning how to shoot) and Ennoshita, who was down for the count, it seemed futile.

 

“They probably know we’re here,” Hinata hissed into my ear. I nodded stiffly.

 

“There’s not much we can do,” I whispered. We needed a plan. “I need you guys to go back down the way we came, okay? Hide behind the wall, we’re about to have a shoot out.” With much hesitancy, they turned and shuffled back down to the nearest opening. I peeked back at the guards and tried to decide what I needed to do. Our safety, our survival, the end of this nightmare, it rested on  _ my _ shoulders.

 

It was time to be the hero of an action movie.

 

I squatted down real low and just  _ barely _ put the muzzle of the gun around the corner. I took a deep breath, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bullet ricocheted off the gun the closest guard was holding, bounced off the ceiling, miraculously, and embedded itself deep in the skull of the guard closest to the door. I pulled myself back behind the corner and covered my mouth with my hand, stifling my breathing so they couldn’t tell which of the two hallways the bullet had come from. “They’re here,” one of them bellowed and I could hear as they shifted into a ready stance. Shit was about to get hard.

 

“Hey, fuckers!” I screamed. It didn’t matter anymore if I lived or died. If I was able to thin the crowd even a little than Noya would be able to finish them off, the others could escape. They would be okay if I didn’t mess up.

 

Their footstep were growing closer to where I was hiding and the second I saw a flash of a person I let loose. I shot every body part, pressed against the wall as if this would keep me safe. I shot a knee, a wrist, big burly men screaming in pain as a tear slipped down my face in pure  _ terror _ that I wouldn’t hit one, that one of them would escape and everyone depending on me would die. A bullet dug into my thigh, my collarbone, clipped my ear, grazed my arm but I didn’t stop shooting until no one was shooting back. Then, on shaky legs, I hobbled my way around the corner, my gun at the ready. Six dead men lay in growing pools of blood, and behind them was a door that would lead to safety.

 

“Hurry,” I hollered back at my team. My shot leg gave out and I went tumbling to the ground and into the pool of blood from my  _ victims _ . I was a killer now. It was starting to sink in. The others rushed past me and sunlight poured into the room as one of them slammed the door open. My head was starting to get foggy from blood loss, I could see Daichi supporting Ennoshita as he seemed to be suffering the same. Someone, Asahi, scooped me up into their arms and carried me out the door to a scene I would never forget.

 

Above me were the greenest of trees. They may have been just the average oak but in that moment they were the most vibrant and beautiful tree I had ever seen. Between the leaves I could see the bluest of skies spotted with the whitest of clouds. The air was so sweet and cool, and it felt beautiful to just breathe it in. I tilted my head away from the view of the trees and the skies and the clouds to look at my friends. There were twelve of us when we walked in, and now, falling out in a stampeding mess, covered in blood, having not showered in two weeks, and completely exhausted, I saw my friends. There were eight of us then and we were finally free.


	11. Ten Years for Manslaughter and a Mind in the Cage for Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've finally escaped.... now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me so long to update! It's about to be marching band season and so summer band camp has just started back up and I've just been so swamped that I end up just falling asleep the moment I get home and haven't gotten a chance to write. On the plus side I'm about 1/3 through the next chapter (which has been surprisingly hard to write) and am so close to finishing this!!!

“Please state your name and age to start your testimony.” The boy, who had been a man for much too long, flinched at the officer’s choice of words.

 

He raised his gaze to meet the camera sitting on the table in front of him. Behind it, to the left, sat his mother and his little sister, who he refused to refer to as anything else. To the right sat two police men and the family lawyer. He was alone where he sat, separated by a camera, ready to admit a truth that kept him up at night, the nightmares seemingly endless even months later. “My name is Hinata Shouyou, I am seventeen years old,” the boy turned to look at the police and lawyer as he waited for their questions.

 

“Thank you. Can you please tell us why, when they gave you your choice to choose between Hashimoto Kazuma, Hinata Natsu, and Kozume Kenma you choose Kozume Kenma?” The lawyer’s voice was steady, as if he weren’t talking about one of the most deadly kidnappings in history.

 

“I had been under the influence of a trial drug, I can’t remember what they had called it, but it gave me temporary amnesia,” Hinata said, his voice being forcibly kept steady, “when I had been in that room I thought I was twelve years old and had no memories of what had happened to everyone that had gone before me. All I knew was that Suga-”

 

“Please use avoid using nicknames,” the policeman interrupted and Hinata nodded in understanding.

 

“Sugawara, he had gone in before me and had been the only one, at the time, that I had witnessed. They pumped him full of bullets for refusing to answer this question. I was too afraid to even hesitate and just said the first name that came to mind.”

 

“Thank you. You were broadcasted to your friends, which you had been separated from, speaking about how you felt about Kageyama Tobio. What is your relationship to him?”

 

“To Kageyama?” The lawyer nodded. “He’s my best friend.”

 

“Why did you choose to speak about him so openly in such an environment?”

 

“I was hoping, though to this day I don’t know why I thought they would, but I was hoping that they  _ would _ broadcast it to the rest of the team. I knew Kageyama was probably going crazy at that point because now Suga, Yamaguchi, I assumed, and I hadn’t returned. I needed Kageyama to calm down and pick up what I was trying to tell him. We’re all very lucky that they had broadcasted it to them, if they hadn’t I doubt we would have been able to escape.”

 

“What exactly had you been trying to tell Kageyama?”

 

“Do you mean the whole  _ The Nekoma Volleyball Team is in room 6B _ thing?” Hinata asked, the words coming out quote for quote and even though his face and tone of voice remained steady, his eyes seemed to grow harder as he fought back against the discomfort these memories brought up.

 

“Yes, that is exactly what I would like to know.”

 

“What they were keeping in room 6B was something no human should ever witness. Conveniently, it just happened to be the same as my dad’s address. I needed to tell them what I had figured out with the whole ‘there is a right answer’ thing,” he made finger quotes around the words before smiling sadly, “I didn’t think it would kill them to find out though.”

 

“How did you believe these words would allow your friends to understand what you wanted them to?”

 

“Yamaguchi had told me what happened to the Nekoma Volleyball Team right before Sugawara had been called in, the memory was still fresh in their minds. I thought that by being reminded of Nekoma at a time like that that Kageyama would be able to put the pieces together that one of my options had already been dead.”

 

“Why mention room 6B?”

 

“I wanted those sick ass people-”

 

“Please refrain from using profanity.”

 

“-to know that I knew what they were planning and that I remember what they had shown me in room 6B.”

 

“Can you tell us more about what you encountered in room 6B?”

 

“The first time I was brought into that room was after the first time I had been called. After that... very rude man had made me give him a blowjob and I decided that I would bite his di- penis. After that, they injected me with the serum. I was super loopy for awhile and they put me into room 6B to make sure I didn’t just  _ die _ . They thought I was too out of it to notice what was right in front of me but I guess some part of me remembered anyway.” The boy took a long pause, needing a moment to compose himself. Hinata knew he was being strong, that what he was about to tell them, while they already knew the information (of course they had entered room 6B when doing the investigation of the place all the boys had been held in), it was still very hard for him to admit. “Can you please take Natsu out of here, I don’t want her to hear this.”

 

His mother nodded in understanding and turned to Natsu, asking her to leave. Once the door closed behind her Hinata started talking again. “I wasn’t lying to Kageyama, not a thing I had said in that dramatic speech had been untrue. It was something that, once I thought about it, it was carved into my brain. The first time I had been thrown in there it had just been Nekoma. They were all just lying there, the bodies of my friends were rotting in front of me. I remembered that Takeda, our team’s faculty advisor, had mentioned that the police had yet to find their bodies. It never occurred to me that the bodies would be there with us in that terrible place.”

 

“Oh God,” he dug the heels of his hands into his eyeballs, “I wish I could forget it. The lifeless look in their eyes, the smell, the way after two weeks, their skin was starting to rot away. Except, the second time they put me in there was worse. I wasn’t on drugs that time, everything was so much clearer. And...” his voice cracked, “and the others were in there too. Suga... Sugawara was in the center of the room and he had so many holes. Oh god, they didn’t seem to understand that one bullet was enough, his body looked like it was already falling apart. And the blood, there was so much blood. He was laying in a pool of it. Tanaka, he was in there too. Dead, like everyone else. A single bullet hole, right between his eyes. They seemed to think it was funny too and they put a sign around his neck saying  _ it wouldn’t hurt anyone to kill a dead man _ . But, the worst part of it all was Yamaguchi. He was still alive, oh god,” he had to stop then and take a shaky breath. By that point his cheeks were completely stained with tears and the dark circles under his eyes seemed even darker. “Yamaguchi was just barely still alive. There was a big hole in his stomach, the size of my fist, and he was bleeding so much and he was so pale.”

 

“Did he say anything to you before he died?”

 

“Show some compassion,” his mother scolded to the lawyer, “give him some time, this is very hard for him to do. You’re lucky he’s even agreed to do this, the other’s certainly didn’t.”

 

“It’s ok mom,” Hinata said, sending her a gently yet broken smile, “and yes he did. He was talking so fast, I’m sorry that I don’t remember it word for word. He, he was talking about Tanaka and how he was thrown in there with him and how they were both forced to just sit there and stare at all the dead bodies. He said that the words, not the ones they hung around Tanaka’s neck when they came to kill the two of them, but the ones written on the back wall, he said that they were the key.”

 

“What did the words say?”

 

“They were written in blood. They were Noya’s kill switch. _ It’s a matter of life or death. _ I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget those words. The letters were so ominous. Yamaguchi wasn’t even looking at me when he said that, he was just staring right at those words like they were the most important thing on the planet  _ while he bled out in front of me _ . I wanted to do something to help him, to stop the bleeding, anything but he was dying and it didn’t matter what I did because I could tell we were too late to save him. I could see the life slip from his eyes. Do you know what it’s like to watch the life fade from one of your best friends eyes? In a room that stinks of the rotting corpses of your loved ones? His blood was staining my hands and I was crying so hard he was all blurry but his eyes, I’ll never forget how they looked then. I doubt I could even put it into words. His last words though, they weren’t for me to hear, but I remember them word for word and I doubt I’ll ever forget them.”

 

“And what were those?” The lawyer was starting to sound impatient with Hinata’s constant need for probing to continue.

 

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. They’re personal to someone very important to me. Do you have any other questions?”

 

“One last one, do you believe that Kageyama Tobio is being rightfully prosecuted?”

 

“No, not one bit.”

  
  


“Please state your name and age to begin your testimony,” the policeman said, staring warily across the long table to the boy chained to the other end.

 

“Nishinoya Yuu, eighteen years old,” his voice didn’t waver, as it did not matter what he said, the end result for him would be the same. He just hoped that what he had to say would change the course of fate for another.

 

“You said that you would be doing this testimony to tell us a specific detail that the casework has yet to uncover?” The policeman did not trust this boy one bit, as he  _ was _ the most notorious serial killer in history, with more than one hundred kills under his belt. To underestimate him would be anyone’s downfall.

 

“Yes, I am here to share my knowledge of the motive behind this group’s kidnapping of my team. I hope,” he looked down at this, breaking eye contact with the stone faced policeman, “that this information will change the course of the trial.”

 

“How did you come across this information?” The policeman was obviously trying very hard, unsuccessfully, to hide his curiosity.

 

“We were taken on October 16th, but on October 1st I was approached by a man saying he was a fan of my work,” Nishinoya hesitated then, cautious of what information would be safe to share. “Every great serial killer and psychopath in history has had some band of followers who, instead of fearing them, are amazed by them. There was a large group of the Avada Killer’s followers who were skeptical of the police’s final judgment on  _ who _ the killer actually was. Of course, we both know they were right. All of my crimes were admitted to in our kidnapper’s tapes. This group of people followed me for years without me evening knowing, they gathered information on me until there were no stones left unturned. On October 1st they approached me asking me to join them.”

 

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

 

“Are you seriously asking me that? They had all the evidence to prove me as the Avada Killer, it wasn’t like I could just go waltzing into the police station swinging a severed head around begging for some help because there was a group of fangirls sitting on my doorstep. That’s basically what this information was, wasn’t it? It was practically the same as me just handing you the body of a murder victim. There was nothing I could do but turn them down.”

 

“You are a serial killer, though, so why not just agree to join them? Or better yet, just off them all yourself?”

 

“You and I both know you watched their tape and looked at all the information you collected. You and I both know you ran an investigation on all twelve of us to confirm everything that had been discovered when the recording were found. Therefore, you and I both know that I  _ am not a killer. _ Legally, yes. I have killed over one hundred people, or at least my body has. I never wanted to hurt anyone but I didn’t have a choice,” his voice cracked and he raised his tear filled eyes to look straight at the policeman, “I wish I could go back in time and make it so I died in that fucking delivery room and not my mother.”

 

“Please do not stray off topic, what was the motive behind this kidnapping?”

 

“I turned them down, don’t you get it? They knew my fucking trigger, they knew my fucking life ass story, they had me pinned. But, they all knew that I could easily kill them at the drop of a hat. They  _ had _ to play it smart. I was taken from my home and brought to the Nekoma gym  _ early _ on the sixteenth. Maybe around three in the morning, maybe four. Nekoma had been having an overnight training session and they were all in the gym and these people kidnapped me and locked me in there with them. Then they set me off and forced me to kill sixteen more people, they hoped that this would convince me to join them. That killing again would remind me of, and I quote, how good it felt to steal someone’s life. I woke up the next morning and hoped, prayed, and wished it had been a dream.”

 

“When Takeda said that they were all dead, that there were no bodies, I knew it hadn’t been a dream. These people were actually dangerous, as in they were dangerous to more people than just me. I was going to go to the police, I was but they came slamming in the doors and killed Kiyoko and Yachi and they took us away.” He started taking shaking breaths as sobs wracked his body. The feeling of pure shock that overtook the cop in that moment, seeing the most deadly serial killer in history sobbing in heartbreak and mourning was a sight he never thought he would see.

 

“Why did they take your friends?” The policeman’s voice was gentle, giving Noya some time to calm down before answering.

 

“I guess after I turned them down they started watching my friends too, learning all of their secrets. Hinata even said that some of the guys, when he saw them with their masks off, had been his customers. They had ingrained themselves into our private lives so completely no one saw it coming. And they did this in sixteen days.  _ Sixteen _ . That’s probably a more terrifying fact than the fact that I had killed eighty nine people before I was eleven years old.  _ Sixteen days _ . And they really did know everything.”

 

“Why did they kidnap your friends if all they wanted was you?”

 

“They thought that if I had no will to fight left in me I would just give myself over to them. They wanted to  _ break _ my friend’s spirits and then throw them back in that godforsaken cage with me so I could look at what I had caused. But they turned it into a game. Two wrong answers, one right answer. If you answer it wrong they’d go through with it anyway and then send you back but if you answered it right they would take you away with absolutely no hint and just kill you. They didn’t care about my friends at all, they were just toys in their game and I was the final prize. A shiny killer that would easily, with only two words, do your biddings for you. They make me sick.”

 

“You killed eighty nine people under your father’s hand with him marking your first kill done willingly, and your ninetieth victim. Then you were forced to kill Nekoma, marking sixteen more people, leaving you at one hundred and six kills. Plus your sister, the guard in the cage room, and the two more you killed protecting your friends, that’s one hundred and ten kills. This, therefore, marks you the deadliest unarmed killer in history. Do you admit, as the complete truth, to all of these murders?”

 

“Yes I do, but I will only willingly admit to my father and the masked guards holding us prisoner. All of my other kills were done without me in control of my own body and without my consent. It would be the same as placing a gun in a sleeping person’s hand, if they shot someone because they squeezed their hand in their sleep, would it still be counted as murder? Or involuntary manslaughter?”

 

“I’m sorry, sir, there is no law that can save you,” the policeman looked pitying, “I hope you have a chance to say goodbye to all of your friends.”

  
  


“Thank you,” Hinata muttered, his voice sounding far away as he stood shell shocked in his mother’s living room. Slowly he managed to pull the phone away from his ear, the call long having been hung up on the other end.

 

“Hinata,” Ennoshita pushed, “what was the verdict?”

 

“ _ FUCK!” _ He screamed, throwing his phone as hard as he could against the nearest wall, leaving a sizeable dent and a million pieces scattering across the floor. He collapsed to his knees and hugged his sides as a sudden onslaught of sobs wracked his tiny body.

 

“Hinata!” Daichi bellowed, his voice alone enough to break his friend out of his stupor, “tell us what the verdict was.”

 

“Ten years. Daichi, they’re locking him up for  _ ten years _ for  _ SAVING US,”  _ he screamed, his voice breaking as it was pushed past its limits. He banged his fist on the ground, his tears forming a small puddle on his thighs. “This is fucking bullshit Daichi, ten years. We’re losing both of them.”   
  


“Death row?” Asahi asked, his voice shaking.

 

Hinata nodded in response, “in six months. Fucking assholes. He saved our fucking lives, they both did. They probably didn’t even hesitate to send Noya to the fucking chair,” he let out a scream, “and Kageyama didn’t even do anything wrong! Ten fucking years for killing some guards that were keeping us hostage at gunpoint!”

 

“Hinata, we need you to calm down. You know that’s not why he’s getting sent to jail,” Narita whispered.

 

“Withholding evidence,” Tsukishima provided.

 

“Yeah, against my father’s case on my behalf. It’s not his fault he didn’t turn him in fucking sooner, he was practically fucking orphaned because of my father, he didn’t know anything and they still have the fucking balls to call it  _ withholding evidence.  _ It’s bullshit!”

 

“His first kill of the guard didn’t count as self-defense murder because the guard already surrendered,” Tsukishima added in for emphasis.

 

“The guy killed Suga and Tanaka and Yama, fuck him. That was self de-fucking-fence. Who knows what that guy could have done, if he was formally trained in fighting, if he had a secret weapon, or if he had a way to call for backup. Kageyama made the right fucking choice, just because he dropped his fucking gun doesn’t mean jack shit.”

 

“There’s nothing we can do,” Ennoshita told him quietly. All of them had been holding onto a shred of hope that Kageyama’s prosecution would work out, that he’d be found innocent. But the guy had looked like he had surrendered, and that seemed to be all that mattered.

 

“Ten years for manslaughter,” Hinata whispered, a shiver visibly making his way up his spine, “and death row.”

 

“I’m so sorry Hinata,” Daichi whispered, pulling him gently into his lap and rocking his friend as he cried. “I wish there was something we could do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOUR MORE TO GO!


	12. Oh My Beloved Ones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, sorry this is so late. Band camp has been taking over my life and destroying my free time, no joke.

He broke down crying the second he saw their broken motionless bodies, pain etched into their tired faces as they laid with their eyes closed. He had done this to them. He had destroyed the lives of his family, all because he had chosen the wrong person. If only he had made the right choice...

 

They would at least have _some_ hope.

 

But he didn’t, and now he had to pay. No, not he-- they. He had ruined more than just his own life. He moved achingly slow to his mother’s side, fingers shaking as he reached for her sickly hand. Her eyes snapped open and he flinched back, knowing he couldn’t face her.

 

“Daichi?” Her voice was hoarse and it tugged dangerously at his heartstrings.

 

He dared to look up, and his heart seized with pain he’d never known before this moment. Her warm eyes lit up when she recognized her son, a smile blooming on her lips within seconds. She struggled to push herself up, happiness radiating off of her like the sun itself.

 

 _Oh, God. No._ He couldn’t do this. He had destroyed her future and she greeted him like he actually deserved her love. He stumbled back, the back of his knees sending the chair tumbling to the ground.

 

“Daichi, what’s wrong? You’re okay! You’re back--” Her brightened face crumpled in pain at the physical movement and what was left of his heart broke in that moment. He had destroyed her body and she was asking _him_ what’s wrong.

 

“I’m sorry, oh God, ma... I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please...” he dropped to his knees, shaking.

 

She drew back in confusion, seeming almost scared of his outburst. His stomach churned at the thought. Begging for her forgiveness was selfish; it would do nothing but relieve his own aching pain.

 

“I’m sorry for making you worry. And for what happened. I’ve missed you,” he said, his voice possessing a levelness he didn’t feel.

 

“Oh, honey.” she breathed out, and Daichi embraced her as gently as his sore muscles allowed. Wetness stained his chest and he tried not to jerk back.

 

“Mom?” he whispered, looking down at the mop of curly brown hair tickling his collar bone. She shook her head, more tears starting to fall.

 

“There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. I’ve thought about it... lying here... Daichi. It’s over. There’s nothing. With your father and I like this... you know this is a curse, right? We are destined to misery forever. We must’ve not been miserable enough. It’s over. Why can’t we just die?”

 

He would’ve cried but he didn’t have the energy. Instead he sat back slowly, dropping his face into his big hands. Sometimes there was so much pain and broken pieces inside that tears would be a luxury to release even the slightest bit.

 

Maybe his mother was right. Maybe he even deserved it.

 

“I’m so sorry, mom, that I abandoned you. That I... that I did this too you,” he could feel his throat constricting as the truth slipped free.

 

“What are you talking about, Daichi?” she sounded taken aback but he still didn’t have the strength to lift his head to look her in the eye.

 

“I did this to you, I told them to! Oh God, I... I’m so sorry Mom. I hurt you, and I...” he didn’t know how to form what he felt, what he thought, his regrets, into words. Everything was coming out as a jumbled mess of syllables and single words that couldn’t come close to explaining. “The people that took us, they… I chose you Ma. I told them to do this to you,” he stuttered as he spoke, the words feeling like copper on his tongue.

 

“Why?” her voice was so soft, like silk or velvet. She wasn’t staring at him, but at the exit sign on the wall above his head.

 

“I thought I was making the right choice,” he peaked over his fingers, taking in her glassy eyes and faraway expression.

 

“Where’s Suga, honey? Why hasn’t he come to visit?” she asked suddenly, a smile blooming, stretched forcibly, across her cheeks. She was still staring straight above her, the bright red light from the exit sign reflecting eerily on her irises.

 

“Suga’s dead, Ma,” he responded slowly. Daichi knew what that expression was, the manic happiness of a suicidal depressant.

 

“Did you kill him too?” _Too,_ the word rang out in his mind. An echo of a recurring thought, reminded to him in a voice full of venom.

 

“I-” he voice caught in his throat, “I did.”

 

His mother thrashed on her hospital bed, shouting profanities at him, suddenly bursting with righteous anger and disdain as his father lay stoic, staring emotionless out the window to his right. “I failed him,” he continued, his voice just a whisper under his mother’s hurtful screams, “I let him go even though I knew they would hurt him. I never even tried to save him. He died because of me, Mom, you’re right. I failed him, I killed him.”

 

“If you love someone, let them go,” his dad supplied, his voice sounding muffled and far away.

 

“He’s _dead_ ,” Daichi gawked, shocked to his core that his father would even say that. “I loved him, and I let him _die_ . I killed him, Dad. I can’t just _let him go!”_ He had stood out of his chair, the back of his knees hitting it loudly. He slumped back down into the stiff plastic and let his eyes fall into the heels of his palms, harshly digging in. Slowly, Daichi breathed in and out, rhythmically, trying desperately to calm himself. “I promised to protect him but I just let him die.”

 

That night, as he finally left the hospital and stepped into the doors of his tiny apartment, his brother sat meekly on the couch. “Mori,” he whispered, his voice rough.

 

“I haven’t been able to work up the nerve to go visit them since the first night,” it’s been a month, Daichi’s mind supplied grimly, “how are they?”

 

Daichi slumped down beside him and pulled him tightly to his side. “I’m not gonna lie, they’re not doing great. We’ll manage though, I promise.”

 

“I didn’t know who to worry about. You went missing and then Dad nearly dies the same day, Mom absolutely lost it. Then once she finally worked up the nerve to return to work she gets attacked. Daichi… I was so alone. I didn’t know what to do, everyone was gone.”

 

Daichi's heart finally broke then. The blame he had placed on his shoulders finally won out and crushed him. Tucked into his younger brother’s side, he sobbed. He cried over his father’s pain, what he did to his mom, and abandoning his brother. But he also cried over failing his friends, _his boyfriend_ , that he couldn’t save them. He cried because he couldn’t protect the people that meant the world to him. His younger brother, who he worked so hard to give a normal life, was suddenly having a world of problems and piece thrust into his hands.

 

He cried because; now what? He escaped only to realize he was still trapped in their wicked game.


	13. Was I Afraid of Loving You?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited to finish writing this! Though... at the same time, I'm so emotionally invested that I'm gonna miss it. Anyway, I decided to turn it into a "hobby book" (as I like to call those random things I write in my free time) so that'll be fun...
> 
> Please enjoy!

He slowly made his way through the rows. The somber atmosphere kept his eyes from wandering away from his target. He wanted nothing more than to just stop walking and turn around; his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest and stop beating simultaneously. He honestly prefered the latter.

 

As he sat down on the plush grass in front of the grave stone reading his best friend’s name, he wanted nothing more than to take his place. “The only time I’ve been able to cry over you was when Hinata told me what you had said. It’s not that I don’t miss you,” his face fell and his eyes drooped, “I think I miss you too much.”

 

He stopped talking then, allowing his words to sink into the cold stone. The words, the name,  _ Yamaguchi Tadashi _ , glared back at him as he felt icy fingers try to choke his heart. He placed a single ambrosia flower at the base of the grave, the golden color catching the light in a nasty, memorable way. A flower representing reciprocated love, speaking words that he couldn’t force through the lump in his throat. 

 

“Everything just feels empty now,” his voice was monotone at best, “I turn every corner expecting you to be around the other side, that big smile on your face. You’d always say my name like I was the most important person in the world. You… you were always there and you used your last breath to  _ thank me _ . You’re sick!” He shouted it, spat it like an insult when really it was a pleading call. “Was I really that important to you?” A whisper.

 

No reply came from the grave stone. There was no wind, only the gentle beat of an early spring sun. No flowers had yet to bloom yet all the snow had melted away to greener pastures. Everything seemed to be blooming to life as he sat in front of a piece of chiseled rock marking that his best friend had been given as fertilizer for the small buds littering the cemetery’s paths.  _ Thank you for staying with me to the end, Tsukki _ . The words stood on the forefront of his mind at all times. “Thank you,” his voice was wavering as Yamaguchi’s last words fell past his lips, “you could feel it, couldn’t you? You knew you weren’t going to make it. Oh god, you were always so strong Tadashi. I don’t think even you realized how strong you were. You held my entire world on your shoulders and you never even struggled with the weight… I sound like a poetic idiot,” he said, tearing his eyes from the years plastered under that beautiful name. 

 

“God, what you do to me Tadashi.” He paused for a moment, taking a breath and trying to will away the tears forming in his eyes. “I’m a terrible person Tadashi, I don’t understand how you could possibly like me. I’m rude, I never express my feelings, I’m blunt and sarcastic and  _ mean to you _ but you still said you loved me. I think I owe to at least tell you why I turned you down… I mean, I did love you, I  _ do _ love you. There was no reason to turn you down, I knew I could trust you.  _ You. _ The kindest, most understanding and patient person alive. But I was afraid. I was selfish Tadashi.”

 

The world felt like it was moving in slow motion as he collected his thoughts, preparing to tell a story he had never once told before. “A year before we met I… his name was Kenshin Akira. He was the first person I ever fell in love with, and I thought he liked me back too. He was one of my brother’s friends so he was always at our house. Sometimes he’d come over even when Akiteru wasn’t, he was that close with our family. With me. I was naive, Tadashi, I was young and stupid and optimistic and naive. And I fell for him.”

 

“I didn’t know that’s what it was at first, I’d never been in love before, I didn’t know what to expect. Mom had left to go grocery shopping or something and Akiteru was at volleyball practice, we were just waiting for him to get home. I just shouted it at him, like you did with me,  _ I like you _ . But, he just said that it was cool and went back to watching T.V.,” Tsukishima took a stuttered breath, his throat constricting as if it were trying to physically hold the words inside him. “His girlfriend broke up with him a week later. That was the first time he brought up my feelings for him. I can still remember what he said like it was yesterday.  _ If you really like me you’d help me forget about her.  _ If you really like me, he said. God, he makes me sick. I thought that this meant he liked me back, that maybe this was his way of saying he wanted to date me too.”

 

He slammed his fist into the dirt. Yamaguchi’s grave sat undisturbed before him, patiently waiting to hear the rest of the story. “If you really like me come over after school today. If you really like me will you run to the store and buy me a coke. If you really like me you won’t tell anyone, right? If you really like me you’ll put those pretty little lips to good use, yeah? My brother was best fucking friends with a fucking pediphile. He let a sick fucking man into our home and our lives, let him be alone with me. I actually thought we were dating too. I told all my friends that I had gotten a boyfriend, not understanding why some of them started fading out of my life disgusted that I was dating another boy. Plus the fact that he was  _ seven years older than me _ . God, I was just a naive child Tadashi, how was I supposed to know that he was just using me? How was I supposed to know that he’d only come to me when he was between relationships or when his girlfriend wasn’t  _ putting out _ ? How was I supposed to know that when he didn’t talk to me for two months that that meant not to go over to his house, not to go to his room, not to look for him? How was I supposed to know that he was just using me? I was only twelve, I hadn’t learned about relationships yet or sex. But when I opened the door to his room, saw him fucking some strange ass woman, when he made eye contact with me and told me to  _ get the fuck out  _ because I was just his bitch to play with when he was bored. That’s when I learned that love is a bullshit concept that people used to get what they want and to hurt other people and… I felt used Tadashi. Heartbroken and used.”

 

“Then I met you, Tadashi,” he voice was only just a whisper now, “you were just as kind and naive as I used to be. And you were beautiful. But I knew what falling in love with you would cause, so I shut down ever butterfly forming in my stomach, denied every time my heart skipped a beat when you would smile, and ignored how much it hurt to break your heart. I never expected you to stay, though. I thought I would lose you after that. You stayed though, through everything. No matter how mean I became, how cruel my words, how badly your brain tried to tear you down and how much I did nothing to stop it. You stayed. You loved me so innocently and all I ever did was break your heart. And you wasted your last breath to  _ thank me _ for it all.”

 

A single tear slipped down his cheek, leaving a shiny trail in it’s wake and dripping off his chin into the freshly turned dirt. “I came here to tell you that I love you, that I will always love you, and that even after months of you being gone I can’t go a moment without thinking of you. I wake up every morning after dreaming about you, wondering when the next time I’ll see you will be. I go through school everyday staring at your empty desk, waiting for you to show up. I eat lunch wondering what you would be eating if you were still hearing, missing your constant chatter. Every night at dinner I wish you were there with me. I wish we had gotten a chance to try out that chocolate cake recipe you had been talking about, I wish that I had been able to listen to rant out your dumb ass turtles latest time outside his tank. I wish…” he trailed off. He didn’t know what he had left to say. The list of things he missed about Yamaguchi was endless and it would be pointless to try to go any further.

 

Plus, he felt like he was choking on air just forcing out the words he had already spoken.

 

“I’m so sorry I failed you, Tadashi,” he whispered before standing. He was about to walk away but hesitated for just a second, sending a forlorn look over his shoulder and telling the grave one last time, “I love you Tadashi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two more chapters left! I'm screaming these two were the hardest to write!!!


	14. The Final Goodbye or One last Hello

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favorite chapter to write just cause it was so hard to wrap everything up. If you do have anymore questions there's still one more chapter to post so feel free to voice them so I can be sure to clarify everything and tie up any loose ends. Cool, please enjoy!

_ “Following the Karasuno Kidnappings, twenty people were arrested for the atrocious amount of crimes that had been revealed. Tapes of the tortures that these twelve young boys had to endure, both within their home lives and from the kidnappers themselves was enough evidence to arrest the families of these poor boys as well as the kidnappers. Hinata Hiro, the father of Karasuno’s number ten, Hinata Shouyou, was revealed to have been selling his son’s body for money;  _ since the boy was only five.  _ The mother claims to have never known what the man had been doing to her son, with Hinata Shouyou himself backing her up saying, “my father always told me that this [the rape and prostitution] was our little secret and that I couldn’t tell anyone, including my mother.” One of the people arrested as a customer of this young boy, having bought into him when he was only thirteen, was one of Karasuno’s own member’s mother, and the mother of one of Hinata Shouyou’s best friends. This friend is none other than Kageyama Tobio, who has been sentenced to ten years in prison for manslaughter, something that him and the rest of the Karasuno team claims was vital to their escape,” a female news anchor said, with too much blue eyeshadow coloring her lids. _

 

_ “Furthermore,” her male counterpart continued, “ the notorious Avada Killer, who was previously believed to be Nishinoya Yamato, was exposed to have actually been his son the entire time, Nishinoya Yuu. The now eighteen year old boy has been sentenced to death row for an astounding 110 kills. The most kills made by one unarmed man in history. A number of corrupt police officers, who had been in cohorts with the kidnappers, were also arrested, including Nishinoya Yuu’s own uncle, Nishinoya Kenji, who had withheld the truth of his nephews past from the police for years.” _

 

“Please turn it off,” Hinata grumbled, “I can’t deal with that crap anymore.”

 

His mother sent him a sad, pitying look and complied, the T.V. promptly being shut off.

 

“It’s almost been a year, I’m sure this story has gotten old by now,” he grumbled.

 

“Are you ready to leave Shouyou?” She asked gently, ignoring her son’s complaints to focus on toeing on her shoes. All she got in response was a curt nod and soon after they were slipping in the car and pulling away from their home. 

 

Half an hour later she was looking at him is distress, her whole body vibrating with discomfort. “I’ll wait in the car, unless you want me to come inside?”

 

“No, thank you, I’ll just come meet you out here when it’s done,” he murmured, slamming the passenger door behind him. The hot June 2017 heat beat down on his skin as he made his way inside the high security prison.

 

“We are not accepting any visitors today sir,” the guard behind the counter spoke lazily as Hinata made his way inside the lobby of the prison.

 

“I’m not here to visit,” he told him, his eyes flicking uncomfortably to the man’s gun, memories of how loud one sounded reverberating in his mind, “I’m here for Nishinoya Yuu, my name is Hinata Shouyou.”

 

“You were one of those kidnapped boys, weren’t you? The sex slave one?” Hinata flinched. “Sorry, that was right insensitive of me. A couple of your friends are already back there waiting for it to start. That kid requested at sunset, which is at,” he checked his watch, “6:29 PM, y’all still have about half an hour.”

 

“Which way should I go?” Hinata asked, his eyes tired and emotionless. Everything felt numb and the guards pointless rambling going in one ear and out the other.

 

“This isn’t going to be easy for you to watch kid,” the guard said, pressing a button, “I’m just warning you. It’s never easy watching your loved ones die.”

 

He got a haunted look on his face at this and averted his eyes, “thank you for the advice.” They both knew he was already well aware of this information.

 

“Please come with me,” a new guard suddenly said, appearing to Hinata’s left. Once he was finally let into the room the only person inside was Ennoshita, who was sitting with his face in his hand. 

 

“It’s been a while,” Hinata spoke, jolting Ennoshita out of his stupor. He had been hospitalized for months, the blood loss making him need a blood transfusion and the bullet having torn so many tendons and ligaments in his arm he ended up getting it amputated. He looked, pale and glassy eyed, like a shell of the man he used to be.

 

“Hinata!” Ennoshita smiled up at him, a small kind of thing that just barely reached his eyes. He stood up and the two met in a big hug. “Narita is in the bathroom but I’m sure he’ll be excited to see you again too.”

 

“It’s been so long, you look so different. I didn’t realize Narita was out of the hospital yet?” After his boyfriend died in his arms, combined with everything that had happened, Narita had admitted himself into a mental hospital claiming he needed some time away from society. Which the rest of the completely understood.

 

“I’m still in there, but I’m allowed to leave for things like this,” came Narita gentle voice from the doorway, he was being followed by Daichi. Neither were smiling, even when Hinata offered a curt hello, their faces just seemed calm. It made sense though, this was probably pretty hard for these three to go through. There had been  _ five _ second years on the team, and soon there would only be two. Keeping up a strong facade was one thing, offering a smile on top of it all was another.

 

“I’m glad that I’m not the only one to have come,” Hinata told them honestly, the four of them finding seats in the uncomfortable, deja vu worthy metal chairs.

 

“I was feeling the same way, it’s nice to see you three again. I haven’t seen you guys since the funerals,” Daichi said quietly, sitting down to Ennoshita’s left. It was completely true. The group of the remaining six Karasuno members had gone completely separate ways after their friends funerals, which had fallen just a couple weeks after the trial had ended in January. “How are you all holding up?”

 

“I still haven’t learned how to write with my left hand,” Ennoshita said blandly, looking accusatorily down at the offending appendage.

 

“I think one of the nurses at the hospital is flirting with me,” Narita added.

 

“I make twenty dollars a day off people walking up to me and offering pity money, I may never need to work again,” Hinata concluded and Daichi let out a small smile at the three of them. “What about you?”

 

“Mori is doing pretty good, he was put a pretty tough spot before we got back but he’s back in school now. My parents are learning how to compensate for both being in wheelchairs.”

 

“That’s pretty good,” Ennoshita told him with a smile, and, speaking of Daichi’s younger brother, “I’m glad Mori’s holding up. It must have been hard being all alone in a situation quite like that.”

 

“With a missing brother and two hospitalized parents, yeah I’d say the kid is pretty strong,” Daichi concluded. Hinata had to look away then, remembering the way Daichi had sobbed at Suga’s funeral, apologizing for not being able to save him. The tears he had shed when he learned his parents were both paralyzed from the waist down. Even after they had all escaped, the repercussions of the time they had spent there was still hanging over their heads.

 

“Akiteru nearly slapped me for worrying him so much when I finally got home,” came a bland voice from doorway. Even while the others greeted him enthusiastically Hinata couldn’t look at him, couldn’t make eye contact with even his toes. The last time they had talked had been after Yamaguchi’s funeral. Hinata had been sobbing but Tsukishima hadn’t even shed a tear, he just stared ahead of him completely still. It was like the idea of his best friend being dead was enough to make him catatonic. The second Yamaguchi’s words fell from Hinata’s lips was the first time Tsukishima had cried over his friend death. And Hinata; Hinata couldn’t help but blame himself for not trying harder to save Yamaguchi.

 

Just knowing he was in the same room as Tsukishima was enough of a reminder of his, probably, biggest regret. Looking at him would be too much.

 

“I can imagine that a little too vividly,” Ennoshita giggled good naturedly.

 

At 6:20, nine minutes till it happened, Asahi, completely distraught, entered the room too. That was all of them, the six remaining of the twelve. “Hey, Asahi, how are you holding up?” Daichi asked in a quiet tone, consoling the large sad man. Asahi found a seat next to his old friend, the two closely linking their hands in Daichi’s lap.

 

The group sat in silence then, not wanting to speak as the only thing on their minds when in each other’s company was something that would scar them for the rest of their lives. They were living reminders of what had happened to them. Seeing each other, hearing their names, looking in the mirror and at their own goddamn  _ reflections _ . That moment being the last they would see of each other was all they could do to avoid the constant reminders of their past.

 

The door leading to the room behind the glass opened and they were all quick make eye contact with the armed guards leading the way for the small frame of their close friend. “Noya,” Asahi whispered, his voice gentle, loving.

 

The aforementioned boy, Nishinoya Yuu, smiled brightly up at his friends from behind the glass. His hands and feet were shackled and the rattling from the chains echoed loudly between the two rooms. He was carefully seated and his arms and feet were cautiously transferred from the chains to the leather binds on the chair. Finally, his head was snapped into place.

 

“The time is 6:27 PM, requested time is at sunset, 6:29 PM, two more minutes,” one of the guards announced as the finishing touches, a head covering, was secured into place.

 

A man in a pressed black suit walked up to Nishinoya’s side as the guards stepped away to line the back wall. He held a microphone up to Nishinoya’s mouth before asking, “any last words?”

 

His face was covered so the group couldn’t see as the life drained from his eyes. His hands and feet and head were bound by thick, tight leather cuffs to the stiff chair. Though looking completely held back there was an amount of character in the way he held himself that was so very distinctly free, so distinctly Nishinoya Yuu. When he voice echoed through the speakers of the two rooms life seemed to move in slow motion.

 

“It’s not real.”

 

The flip was switched, his body convulsed violently, and then silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONLY ONE MORE CHAPTER OMG IM NOT READY anyway... as I said earlier; If you do have anymore questions there's still one more chapter to post so feel free to voice them so I can be sure to clarify everything and tie up any loose ends.


	15. Good Morning Cruel World

He awoke in a cold sweat. His whole body was sore from the night before’s activities, fingerprints bruised into his hip bones, blood and cum staining his skin and sheets, his scalp sore and sensitive from his hair having been pulled a little too harshly. He let out a groan, one that was too quiet to alert the rest of the house that he was awake. He carefully rolled over, as not to put any unnecessary strain on his aching joints and muscles, to check his phone for the time. 12:35 AM, October 15, 2016. He sat up with minimal damage and, after throwing on a pair of baggy sweatpants and a random t-shirt, made his way out to the kitchen to get some water.

The second his butt hit the kitchen table’s chair he blacks out. His mind goes reeling with memories of his dream last night, flickering between something dark and something he wishes to hold onto a little longer. _We’re alive and we’re together_ , Suga’s voice flutters into his brain, saying words he’s never heard him say before, coated in a level of forced optimism that make his muscles tense uncomfortably. _Stop! They shouldn’t know this, any of this!_ It was Nishinoya’s voice now, his words being followed by memories of years ago when a serial killer had been captured only a couple towns over. _Avada Kedavra._

“What’s happening?” He slurred, dizzy from the sudden swell. His dream from last night seeming almost too real. _It wouldn’t hurt anyone to kill a dead man._ Voices echoed in his mind, speaking sentenced that brought a wave of uncomfortable nausea to the pit of his stomach. _The Nekoma Volleyball Team… they’re all dead. Were you or were you not born under the name Sugawara Mao? Your name is Hinata Shouyou and you are sixteen years old. He wants me to be ok but right now I’m not and I need him. Thank you for staying with me till the end, Tsukki. Enno, Hisashi, he isn’t breathing. Ten years for manslaughter and death row. Any last words?_

“What’s happening to me?” He choked on his words as images and sentences flashed past his mind’s eye. They left a nasty taste in his throat and made his heart sink to his stomach. Slowly, he managed to open up his phone and put _Avada Killer_ into the search bar. Nishinoya Yamato, arrested as Avada Killer by his own brother. Son of Avada Killer sent to live with uncle after father’s arrest. Avada Killer, Murder or Suicide? “Noya... “ Hinata whispered his eyes bulging out of his skull at this.

Sugawara’s court case, Asahi’s father’s death, Tanaka’s families passing and his suicide attempt, it was all checking out. Things he _didn’t know_ about his friends was now fresh information staining the forefront of his mind. _Miyagi Prefecture was a buzz the morning of October 16th, 2016. As the residents of the quaint Torono Town sat down to watch the morning news or read their daily papers they were informed of a shocking occurrence that had happened the night before: four dead and twelve missing._

He was out the door moments later, shoes be damned. At 1:00 AM Hinata Shouyou, still bloody and dirtied from his activities a handful of hours before, was sprinting through the broken glass covered streets of his neighborhood. Fear and adrenaline kept him from feeling any pain. He burst through the doors of the local police station, scaring the night shift out of their boredom filled stupors. “I need your help,” he panted out, his voice scratchy from dehydration.

“My god,” the police gasped, taking in his disheveled appearance and frantic body language, “what’s happening? Is someone injured?”

“No, no, not yet, I…” he trailed off then as his common sense finally caught up with his impulses. How was he supposed to explain this? “I had a dream…” the police’s shoulders relaxed then as they became more perplexed than worried. “I know this sounds stupid but I need you to believe me or a lot of people are going to die.”

“This is a police station, we’re not here to listen to you spouting some bullshit about a nightmare you might have had,” one of the policemen said stiffly.

“Hold up, Kouta, let’s hear the kid out. It’s not like we have anything better to do,” one of the one’s with heavier eye bags dryly countered and soon Hinata had their full attention.

“Thank you. I know this sounds stupid, ridiculous really, but you need to trust me. Right now the Nekoma Volleyball Club is having an overnight training camp and while they’re all asleep they’re going to be attacked by…” _Noya_ , he very well couldn’t say _that_. “They’re going to be attacked by a group of Avada Killer fanatics.”

One of the policemen, Kouta, broke out into hearty laughter then, “you really think that a bunch of fans of an out of date killer are going to go kill a bunch of pubescent volleyball kids. You’ve really got a wild imagination there kid.”

“Yeah, I do!” That shut the man up quickly. “This is one of the groups that believes that the Avada Killer is actually his son and not him, you’ve heard of those right?” The men tensed up then, those groups and that theory was carefully hidden from the public eye. “Well the Avada Killer’s son is on my volleyball team.” They looked less skeptical than. The identity of the Avada Killer’s son wasn’t released to the public and the kid himself certainly wasn’t broadcasting his heritage.

“We’re listening.”

“They want to convince him to start killing again, cause they think he was the killer. So first they kill Nekoma, and then they’re going to take us. They’re going to kill our couch and our advisory and our managers and then they’re going to kidnap our team. If you don’t stop them then a lot of people are going to die.”

“How do we know we can trust you, kid?” John raised his eyebrow skeptically.

Hinata violently shook his head. He didn’t have any proof, the police really didn’t have any reason to believe him, “ _please_ ,” he stressed, “please save my friends.” He was going to make them believe him whether it was the last thing he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the patience with this last chapter, I'm sorry it took so long to come out. The last year has been really hard for me and I was struggling to find motivation to do most things, let alone write this chapter. It's very short, I apologize, but I'm proud of how it turned out regardless. I have been going through a rewriting this story, but how I plan on changing it has been tricky so I can't say if I'll ever update it on here, in all honesty.
> 
> Thank you for reading this and enjoying it. I hope to publish again soon <3


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